| 2003 - Bill
Ford jumped in this year and wrested the presidency from multi-termer
Bill Gwaltney. Karen Jordahl was in her second year of directing
the chorus, and improving our sound with each rehearsal. Our
annual show was titled Harmony Hotel
and was performed at the University of West Florida's Center for
Fine and Performing Arts. The Emerald Coast Barbershop Chorus and
Sugar Beach Sweet Adelines Chorus, both from Fort Walton, Florida,
graced our stage. The show was set in the lobby of Harmony Hotel.
It was a Friday evening and all sorts of things were in the offing
for the weekend. There were barbershop singers arriving for
competition, plus some competitive dancers as well. Some people
traveling through were caught up in the excitement. We once again
used non-barbershoppers for the main speaking roles. Several local
quartets performed, plus our special guest quartet, Endeavor, 2001
and 2002 International semi-finalists.
2004 - Bill Ford did such a great job as chapter president in
2003 that we decided to keep him for another year, and Karen
Jordahl continued her reign as director. Our show this year was Singing
Across America: A Sentimental Journey. Jerry Merrill was
the show chairman and Scott Harrington was the show director. The
show's plot centered around a young boy's excited discovery that
his family would be traveling by train to Disney World, which led
to an unexpected story. The lad asked his grandfather an innocent
question that triggered the sharing of a touching life story and
took the boy's grandfather on "a sentimental journey."
We once again used the very entertaining Don
Parker as our emcee.
Our guest quartet was My Three Sons, Sunshine District's 2003
quartet champions, which was comprised of a father and his three
sons. They are the first father and son quartet in the history of
the society to win a district-level competition.
2005 - We started off the year with Karen Jordahl renewed as
our director for another year. She and eight others (Ford,
Cassens, McDonald, Whitcomb, Champlin, Bragan, Doheny and
Harrington) attended COTS at Altamonte Springs. This would not
have been possible -- there are registration fees and room
expenses associated with COTS -- had it not been for Bill Ford’s
initiating the Century Club in 2004.
In February, we had one of the most successful Singing
Valentines in many a year — we sang to more than 90 sweethearts!
While the number of performances didn’t set a new record, our
earnings did, thanks in part to Ralph Fisk’s great coordination
of our quartets. This great effort allowed us to upgrade our
uniforms as we purchased new tuxedo jackets.
Our annual show, at the Pensacola Cultural Center, featured
Vocal Spectrum, the International Collegiate Champions, as our
guest quartet. An awesome effort spearheaded by Dale Bragan
brought in a record number of ads for our printed program. We used
advertising to promote our show more than in previous years. All
of our hard work paid off with a solid boost to our bank account.
And with Don
Parker as our emcee, we played to a very responsive audience.
Thanks to our solid financial situation we were able to add
gold cummerbunds and bow ties to our wardrobe before going to
Jacksonville for the District Convention. We were able to charter
a bus to ease our travel expenses and our driving stress. Although
we would have liked to have won our plateau, we did raise our
baseline and now have some competition experience for the future.
For the first time in several years we took advantage of an
opportunity to bring in a coach. Raymond Schwarzkopf was in the
area and spent a great and exciting evening with us. The chorus
(and Karen) absorbed his expertise like a sponge proving it a
great investment for the chorus.
July brought our Patriotic Parade to area senior care centers
— something we will probably do for years to come.
The U Can Sing, Too international campaign found us doing some
advertising for our special guest night. Although we found that it
was the old reliable personal invitation that brought in our
guests, we still had a successful evening with 15 new faces in
attendance.
We put ourselves “on the record” by recording The Star
Spangled Banner at the WUWF-FM studios. The CD has been
distributed to, and is being heard on, several area radio
stations.
The end of summer found us without the services of a VP of
Music and Performance. Not to worry as Jack Champlin agreed to
serve. He and Karen moved us through the fall as we worked on
songs for our Sweethearts on Parade theme for our March 11th show,
and got ready for our Christmas schedule. We added red bow ties
and cummerbunds in anticipation of a busy Christmas season. With
events scheduled for December 3rd (Tannenbaum Express) and
December 4th (a paid sing for West Florida Hospital’s H2U
Volunteers), we were saddened to learn of the loss of Jerry
Merrill to cancer. The chorus was asked by Shireen Merrill,
Jerry’s wife, to sing at the memorial service. In Jerry’s
memory, a donation of $100 was given to Northminster Presbyterian
Church.
Thanks to Frank Thomann, the Gateway Church of Christ was our
venue for our annual Christmas Show on December 10th. This marked
the first show in some time that we shared the stage with the
Pensacola Sound. An audience of 170 persons attended and as their
price of admission brought more than 300 pounds of food for Manna
Food Bank and donations of $200 for ARC Gateway, the Association
for Retarded Citizens. The chorus also made a contribution of $300
to ARC Gateway.
In the winter and spring and again in the fall we helped to
grow our treasury by working concessions at the Pensacola Civic
Center. More than $2000 came in from our contract with the Civic
Center and our “tip buckets.” A big “thank you” is also in
order to Dave Cassens, Bob Whitcomb, Dale Bragan and Bill Ford for
putting together our grant request for the Arts Council of
Northwest Florida. That effort brought us an award of $2,500.
We sent off our deposit to send four folks to COTS; gave an
advance for our quartets for our March 11th show; and made our
annual contribution to ARC Gateway and still had money in the
bank. |
