Alexandra Hinckley Cramer

‘The Singing Milkmaid of Cowley, Wyoming’

Jan. 17, 1941 – Feb. 8, 2025

It may be an old wives’ tale. Or perhaps the stuff of legend. But the redheaded, five-pound baby girl is reputed in family lore to have been the last baby born “at home” in Cowley, with the beloved Dr. Tom standing by. It was January 17, 1941. 

Alexandra Hinckley was born to Madge Marchant and DeVere Taggart Hinckley. Her brother, Christian, was already a fine, fat lad of 13 months when she disrupted his life forever. Her mother chose the name Alexandra after a character in a book. Alexandra became Alex, and Alex quickly became “Aggie” to her not-very-big brother. Her dad called her “Ag” until the day he died.

Alex knew from the age of 5 that she wanted to be a star. A movie star like Rita Hayworth. A dancer like Ginger Rogers. She hid movie magazines under her bed so she could live her secret dreams vicariously. As she grew older, she decided that she was going to be a singer. She knew it in the very fiber of her being. A singer like Joan Sutherland. 

At age 11 Alex begged her mom to beg next-door neighbor Vern Wilcock to give her vocal lessons along with every high school girl in the county. Vern agreed, and from that moment, Alex knew that her pathway would be made of music. 

She competed at age 13 against her mother for the leading role in the LDS stake production of “New Moon.” Her mother was chosen for the role, much to Alex’s annoyance. But the following year, Alex tried out for the lead in “Naughty Marietta” and was selected. This sister will never forget the songs from either of those productions. The house rang night and day with music. Higher than high Cs trembled in the shadows at all times, waiting to be plucked and planted in a song. Alex could sing higher than Mom, but Mom could sing louder. 

During their growing-up years, Alex and Chris helped do the chores on the dairy farm. Her main job was to drive the herd of 35 Holsteins from the corral on the south edge of Cowley to the field where they pastured two miles west of town. Twice a day. Morning and afternoon. For a girl who loved to sing, those daily journeys offered plenty of empty space and blue sky into which she could trill and warble to her heart’s content. “The Singing Milkmaid of Cowley, Wyoming” was born on such sojourns and became part of local legend.

It was at a high school music festival in 1959 when Alex was “discovered.” Her judge was Dr. Berton Coffin from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He offered her a scholarship on the spot if she would agree to attend CU and study with him. It’s no wonder. I can still see her in her white net formal and her bright red hair, standing near the edge of the stage in the church cultural hall, singing “Je Suis Titania.” She was a senior in high school. I was in fourth grade. She was perfect. And she was chosen the outstanding vocal soloist in all Wyoming schools that year.

During her senior year of college, Alex entered the Metropolitan Opera regional auditions in Denver as a lyric coloratura. She placed second. She said, “Had the coloratura who placed first gotten laryngitis or something even more dreadful, I would have had the opportunity to compete on the Metropolitan Opera stage in New York City. Alas, she was in fine voice.”

Not to be easily discouraged from accomplishing her dream, Alex signed a contract upon graduation from college to sing with the Metropolitan Opera National Company on its inaugural tour. It was the dream of the “Junior Met,” as it was often called, to provide people in cities across the country with superb musical performances. Alex toured with the company for a year before heading to Munich, where she studied German and continued her vocal training. 

In her own words, Alex “got cold feet” after a year overseas and returned home to figure out her next move. She spent a summer playing Mary in “Little Mary Sunshine” at the Pink Garter Theatre in Cody before heading to Los Angeles, where she studied at UCLA’s opera workshop under Ruth Chamlee, a soprano with the Metropolitan Opera. 

And then? This farmer’s daughter, this housewife’s child, this singing milkmaid from tiny Cowley decided to travel to the center of the musical and theatrical universe to see what she could see and do what she could do. New York City! She was 26 years old. 

She lived in Manhattan on the West Side of Central Park for the next 14 years. She worked temp jobs as a secretary, did some modeling, acted in summer stock theater, landed a job as a featured singer at Radio City Music Hall, sang as a soloist in several churches, performed in off-Broadway productions and eventually landed a permanent office job at Wenner-Gren Foundation, where she worked for several years to support her singing habit.

Alex never accomplished her first great dream of singing at the Met, but she spent her entire life singing. She may well have been the first person from her tiny Mormon hometown, which was full of musically gifted people, who tried to turn her gift into her profession, to sing for a living. She was the embodiment of “the time-honored story” of the small-town girl who goes off to the big city to seek her fame and fortune. 

Alex spent the summer of 1974 at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz, Austria. A passion for music and the stage still burned within her, but the fire was not as hot as it had been. She had met the man of her dreams a couple of years earlier and realized that she wanted a home and a family with real stability more than she wanted to continue fighting the battle to succeed in the dog-eat-dog world of aspiring actors and musicians. 

On August 9, 1975, Alexandra Hinckley and Douglas Lloyd Cramer were married in the shade of the willow tree on the Hinckley lawn in Cowley. Dad even allowed them to mow the lawn for the occasion. Alex wore a cream-colored linen dress; Doug wore a colorful African tunic. Alex’s brother Schuyler and Doug’s son Adam watched the proceedings from the roof of the Hinckley house. 

The Cramers lived in Manhattan when their baby girl was born in 1979. Alex wanted to name the baby “Wyoming” after her beloved Aunt Wyoming. Doug was not too thrilled. He wanted to name the baby Alice Gallagher after his favorite aunt. Ultimately, the baby became Wyoming Alice Gallagher Cramer. Her father called her “Wombat.” Her mother called her Wyoming. And said, “Nothing else that I have accomplished in my life was ever as wonderful as this.”

Before long the family moved out of “the city” to Wayne, New Jersey. Alex was an experienced administrative assistant and had no trouble landing a position with FM Global, where she worked for the next 25 years as she helped raise their daughter and continued to find opportunities to sing. 

In 1992 Doug died unexpectedly, leaving Alex and 13-year-old Wyoming adrift on a sea of sorrow. To add to their pain, Alex was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was difficult. It was unkind. It was nearly impossible. But it opened the door for an old boyfriend to step in and help to heal their wounds with his fast talk and Italian cuisine. Tom Migliore became Alex’s dearest friend and partner for 26 years until his own death from COVID in 2020. 

In 2004, in one of the most significant moves of her later life, Alex joined Ars Musica Chorale, a community of musicians who can’t keep from singing. They, along with Ridgewood Chorale, became her passion and her family for the next twenty years, until she became so weary from chemo-infusions that she simply couldn’t keep up with the practice schedule and performances. It was in Ars Musica where she met Dejah Olsen, who sang by her side and acted as “her angel” during her second four-year battle with cancer.

It broke Alex’s heart to stop singing with Ars Musica, but in the grandest Alex-style, she transferred her goal of continuing to sing until she was dead to the church and community choirs at Cedar Crest Village in Pompton Plains, the retirement community in which she resided at the time of her death. The only change in her attitude through all of her years of singing was that she willingly became the lead second soprano, leaving the first sopranos to their “show off-y ways,” in the words of her alto sister.

Alexandra Hinckley Cramer soared into her eternity early on the morning of February 8, 2025. The New Jersey sky was splashed crimson from one end to the other, the very color as is the stripe on a Wyoming rainbow trout. And lordy, how they sang! How all of those friends and relatives sang when they saw her coming. Even the Holsteins raised their heads to the sound of that milkmaid singing to her mother as she danced her way up the path and through the gate.

Alexandra was preceded in death by husband Douglas Lloyd Cramer, dearest friend Tom Migliore, parents Madge Marchant and DeVere Taggart Hinckley, brothers Christian Steele and Burgess Benedict Hinckley and sister and brother-in-law Allison and Pony Munkres. 

She is survived by step-son Adam (Lizzy) Cramer and daughter Quinlan; daughter Wyoming (Ian) Borrenbergen and children Sydney, Xander and Scarlett; sister Maurine Hinckley-Cole; sister-in-law Sarah Hinckley; brothers Frank (Karen) and Schuyler (Ann); and two generations of nieces and nephews who will forever remember her as “Our elegant and graceful Aunt Alex.” This sister happens to know that she could also cuss a blue streak. 

A family gathering full of songs and stories about Alex will be held in Wyoming in July 2025.