That same spring division counselor Mike Senter set up and promoted a "Lubbock Harmony Education Festival" for June. Our music committee immediately set about choosing songs for a contest package: "where Have My Old Friends Gone?" and "I'm Still Having Fun!". Under the direction of Andy Maddox, the chorus traveled to Lubbock for the June music clinic with the new contest package. After winning the Division I contest with a still evolving contest package we found ourselves financially unable to travel to the district convention in New Orleans.

Instead we took the set to the Small Chorus contest in Dallas in the spring of '86. By now the "Old Man" package, with appropriate costuming, and painstaking theatrical makeup, was now polished to perfection. We "walked away" with the Small Chorus Championship. The performance so impressed district officials that an invitation was extended to the chapter to attend the fall convention in Beaumont to perform the winning package.

Having moved from our first meeting place, the Windsor Hotel, in 1970, we were thrilled to learn that, after standing vacant for over a decade, it had now been completely renovated. Currently it is a retirement apartment complex for up to 100 couples/singles. We were very pleased to have been invited back as we are now holding our rehearsals in our original home.

Federal regulation of the oil industry precipitated an economic recession across the southwest. By the mid-'80's, this recession deepened into genuine depression after the end of the Vietnam War. While the rest of the nation enjoyed a boom, the southwest experienced bank failures, S & L scandals, loss of trade with Mexico through tat country's run away inflation. The local depression was prolonged by a drought that seriously affected agriculture and ranching and the loss of federal spending as Republican administrations dismantled the structures of the LIW era.

The dislocations and shifting priorities of many otherwise ardent barbershoppers took its toll in chapter memberships. Dramatic changes in technology, cultural habits, pattern, tastes and entertainments has increased the competition for men's time and attention.

But, with a good program, dynamic director, and enthusiasm for our purely American art form, chapters are surviving. Abilene intends to be around to celebrate its fifty years of continuous activity in 1999 in grand style.