Johnny Mercer's widow, Ginger, entrusted Manilow with a cache of Mercer's lyrics that had never been set to music, although Manilow used only Mercer's "When October Goes" for the project.
The passage describes how Johnny Mercer's widow gave Barry Manilow a set of unperformed lyrics.  Manilow chose to use one specific lyric from this set, "When October Goes," for his project.