Everyone's life has a story. In "Lives," we tell some of those stories about North Shore people who have died recently. "Lives" runs Mondays in The Salem News.
SALEM — The walls in Ted Cole's Music Shop on Church Street in Salem are decorated with compressed versions of Broadway musical posters. In the bins below, CDs are arranged categorically, and you can find everything from the Grateful Dead to Edith Piaf.
At the back of the store, there's a makeshift office, just a raised platform and a desk. There's something like a shrine to the "other man" in Paula Audet's life on the wall behind the desk, photos of gravel-voiced jazz singer Steve Tyrell.
The store is a family business started by its namesake, Audet's father, Ted Cole, owned and operated by Audet and her brother, Jerry Cole, after their father's death.
This is a case where "family" was at least as important as "business," and it was here — or one of the five or six other places that housed the business over the years — where Audet spent nearly half of every day, six days a week, from the time she was in high school.
Even after she was diagnosed with brain cancer shortly after New Year's Day, she came here every day as long as she was able. It wasn't just because she didn't know anything else; it was because she never wanted to know anything else.
Audet died Sunday, Jan. 31, at the Kaplan Family Hospice House in Danvers. She was 63.
Give Me the Simple Life
Born on Christmas Eve, 1946, Audet grew up on Salem's Lemon Street. It wasn't far from there to Salem Willows, where there was another family business at the time, the Dizzy Land arcade owned by her grandfather.
Paula and her husband, Paul Audet, were high school sweethearts who married a little more than a year after graduation on Sept. 24, 1967.
The couple bought a house on Everett Road in Salem, where they raised two daughters, Michelle (MacAdams) and Lisa (Alves), and where Paula lived until her death.
The store is in danger of becoming an anachronism. Kids — and many adults — don't buy CDs anymore, and even sheet music can be downloaded from the Internet.
Audet knew that somewhere down the line the store would no longer be viable, but despite her daughters' urging to just sell the place and enjoy life, she refused.
"I'd be bored," she told them.
Although she was a music lover with eclectic tastes, the store, for her, was never just about music. She cheerfully spent her days there because she loved to meet with people and enjoyed the store's location on a quiet street with lots of foot traffic.
She had a smile for everyone who came in, and eventually most customers who came in asked for her.
Lisa and Michelle said people they never met before approached them during their mom's wake to tell them how much they had enjoyed doing business with her.
"She was kind of the personality of the place," Paul said. "It's just not the same without her."
You'll Be in My Heart
Music teachers and piano players searching for sheet music are the store's most dependable customers these days. There's a small selection of guitars, banjos and ukuleles hanging behind the front counter, but it's a far cry from the days the store offered not only a wider range of instruments but instruction, as well.
When they lost the man who repaired the instruments and could find no one to replace him, they dropped all but the few stringed instruments that remain.
When Paul and Paula weren't working, they enjoyed going on cruises, and Paula particularly loved the Greek islands, the Mediterranean and France.
She was a huge fan of Steve Tyrell, who worked behind the scenes in the music industry for years. Most people first heard his voice on the soundtrack for 1991's "Father of the Bride," for which he recorded "The Way You Look Tonight."
A 1999 album of jazz and pop chestnuts titled "A New Standard" drew a crowd of devotees, including Audet. She attended all of Tyrell's concert performances locally and had a treasured photo taken with him when he dropped into the store after a visit to the Athenaeum a couple of years ago.
Paul and the rest of Audet's loved ones are still trying to cope with the suddenness of their loss. Michelle's son Craig wrote a poem for his grandmother that he read at her service. The first two lines of one stanza eloquently evoke both that shock and Audet's love of music.
"Now God's choice is final, the needle lifted from the vinyl," he wrote.
"I didn't just lose my mom," Michelle said. "I lost my best friend."
Staff writer Steve Landwehr can be reached at 978-338-2660 or by e-mail at slandwehr@salemnews.com.
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