Dates

• Existence: 1918 - 2009

Biography

Lucia Thorne was born in 1918 in Clinton, Iowa to Madge Watkins Thorne and Jent George Thorne. She began to study singing at the age of sixteen, first learning at home with her mother, who was herself a music teacher. After her mother's death in 1938, nineteen-year-old Lucia Thorne moved home to Maquoketa to stay with her father for a year, then left for Chicago to study at the Chicago Musical College. She had previously attended Maquoketa Jr. College. Thorne's musical career began in Chicago nightclubs and developed through tours in the Midwest. Around 1945 she was offered a position at WHO radio in Des Moines, where she would spend fifteen years singing on such programs as Barn Dance Frolic, Lavender and Lace, and Melody Madhouse. During this time, she also wrote and copyrighted songs, including "The Moon is High" (1945) and "You're My One and Only" (1946). In 1949 she married Henry "Bud" Hovland, a fellow staff member at WHO, with whom she had three children: Nicholas Thorne Hovland, Nancy Hovland, and Roxanne Hovland. Bud Hovland died in 1972. After her professional singing career, Lucia Thorne Hovland worked as a piano and organ teacher. She died in 2009, at the age of ninety-one.

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