Remembering Gayle Pilat

September 15, 1953 – December 17, 2020

This website is dedicated to the memory of Gayle Pilat, a woman of many talents and incredible generosity, intelligence and kindness.

Throughout this website, you’ll be able to read about Gayle’s remarkable life, listen to her music, see examples of her art and jewelry, and look at a number of photos and videos from her life.

Why am I doing this?

Gayle died during the pandemic before we had vaccines. Everyone was self-isolating and so there was no way to hold any sort of funeral or memorial service for her.  Even if we had, it would have been a conundrum as to where to hold it – in Vermont where she was living at the time of her death, or back in Cleveland, where so many of her family and friends live? I considered doing a Zoom event, but that presented a variety of technical and other logistical challenges, so that wasn’t a viable solution.  As a result, nothing was done beyond me sending out weekly emails to a small group of family and friends with some of her music and photos.

But I’ve thought for a long time that Gayle deserves some sort of actual memorial or celebration of life, the opportunity for those who cared about her to express what she meant to us, how she touched our lives and the impact of her loss.  And I think we, her family and friends, need it too. 

So I decided to create this website to allow us to honor Gayle and to serve as a permanent memorial to her. It will showcase her musical and artistic accomplishments and recount stories that give us all a better understanding of who she was and her many achievements, talents and attributes.  And unlike a funeral, which once it’s over, it’s over, this will allow you to come back and visit whenever and as often you wish. I’ll be continuing to add more music and photos over time, so I hope you’ll come back periodically to check out what’s new.

What can YOU do?

As her wife, I of course have my own unique perspectives and memories of Gayle and will share much of that with you throughout this website. But I know that many of you have your own memories and stories about Gayle that I think would be nice to share, and I encourage each of you to do so. Perhaps tell us how you knew her or how she impacted your life, reminiscences of adventures or tribulations you experienced together, funny – or not so funny – stories of things she did or something memorable or silly that she said. Share with us photos you have of her, perhaps write a poem, or do a drawing, or record yourself singing a song, or a create a video just talking about her – anything that you want to share with the rest of us that is meaningful to you relating to Gayle. It can be serious or funny, short or long, whatever you want us to know about her, your relationship with her, your experiences with her, your feelings for her.  In this way, we can honor her and how she affected our lives, what she meant to us and why we cared about her.

If you wish to participate – and I very much hope you will – please email your thoughts, anecdotes, photos, etc.  to laura@rememberinggaylepilat.com and I will add your contributions to the website. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

And please share this with anyone you know who you think might want to read about Gayle or possibly contribute something of their own to the site. I will try to reach as many people as I can, but I’m sure that there are many that I will have no way of communicating with on my own, so your help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance for taking part in this memorial project. You – her family and friends – all meant a great deal to her, and I think it will be very touching, and maybe even enlightening, for each of us to learn about everyone else’s memories of Gayle. And we can finally feel like we have had the opportunity to come together as a community, virtual though it may be, to remember and honor her life.  

Thank you,
Laura Abel

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