John Newton Amazing Grace

Talented Carmina Aguilar sings praises to God, adores her baker-vocalist father

Midland's Carmina Aguilar was "born with a song in her heart."

Her father, Antonio "Tony" Aguilar, 60, confidently attests to that and not just because the name Carmina is rooted in the Latin word for song.

The father inspires the daughter to greatness in singing songs of praise and in baking cakes and other pastries at their 1994-founded Tony's Old-Fashioned Bakery.

They sing liturgical songs with operatic flair and intensity: He as a lyric baritone and she as a coloratura soprano.

Her mother and his wife, Maria Dolores, said their daughter's "love for music" was inspired by her singing lullabies.

"Saint Augustine always said that whenever you sing to God, it is like praying twice," says Carmina, 28. "It is true. Whenever I sing, it is not only just a recited prayer to God. In singing, you can actually feel that prayer soar out of you and send it to heaven."

In earnest, father and daughter did just that a cappella in their bakery shop, a modest peach-colored frame house with country-blue trim. The rafters must have quaked with joy, indeed, if rafters tremble with fear of the Lord, when the duet sang Franz Schubert's classical "Ave Maria" hymn in Latin and then each separately sang the opening lyrics to John Newton's "Amazing Grace," she in English and he in Spanish.

The listeners were amazed.

Music inspires the faith of the Aguilar family.

"My dad is the first one I wanted to be like," Carmina says. "He would open his mouth at church (Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church) and this huge sound would come out. And people would be crying, (those who) felt the presence of God, in everything he sings."

"People just love my dad. I want to be just like him," says Carmina. She and her 33-year-old brother, Gerardo Antonio Aguilar, a tenor who is also a baker at the family's store, sing at Saint Stephen's Catholic Church. Their non-baker older brother, Francisco Antonio Aguilar, 38, is an Upton County deputy sheriff.

Their father and mother settled in Midland early in 1972 not long after their December 1971 marriage at Piedras Negras, their hometown in Coahuila, Mexico, just across the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass. By age 19 in 1970, Antonio Aguilar had graduated as a chemist-pharmacist from the University of Coahuila at Piedras Negras. He attended college on a choral scholarship. As a soloist, "I used to go to the rooftop to sing to wake everybody up" with songs about the "land of Mexico and its history.

Pen and Sword Books: Seafarers' Voices 3: Slaver Captain by John ...

For the first thirty years of his life, however, he was engrossed in the slave trade. His father planned for him to take up a position as slave master on a West Indies plantation but he was instead pressed into the Royal Navy where, after attempting to desert, he was captured and flogged round the fleet. After this humiliation he was placed in service on a slave ship bound for Sierra Leone, but there, having upset his captain and crew, he found himself the servant of the merchant’s wife, an African Duchess called Princess Peye, who abused him along with her slaves. As he wrote himself, he was ‘an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves of West Africa.’  Many will know the name John Newton best for writing the hymn Amazing Grace; much less known is the fact that much of his earlier life was spent as a seaman, occupied in the Atlantic slave trade. This modest account, part of the Seafarer's Voices series, is edited by former merchant marine and BBC editor Vincent McInerney, and through his abridgement for modern readership (these accounts being mid-18th century) the reader is able to gain insight into a time that one could have thought only to imagine. Newton's story is certainly a fascinating one, despite its notably truthful and sober nature; beginning with his desertion of the Royal Navy to be with his loved one, Mary Catlett, Newton was recaptured and endured public flogging before being 'sold' to a ship in Africa, effectively becoming another trader's slave. Newton's journey is then remarkable as he himself makes the transition from slave to slaver, eventually captaining three ships before retiring to be ordained into the Church of England ministry. It is his years on the sea however which are the focus of this recollection, which is complete with copies of many letters written by Newton during the period. It was only later in his life that Newton even recounted these earlier travails, but he did so in an explicit and brutally honest way which offer modern readers a rare first-hand insight of what must have been a harrowing and horrifying trade.

Amazing Grace, The Beloved Song

John Newton, From Disgrace to Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace in John Newton, Slave Ship Captain, Hymn Writer, and Abolitionist

Amazing grace, the spirituality of John Newton