Veterans’ Day

 Photo by Jimmy

      “The Denver guys [barbershop chorus] used to meet at our church on Colorado Boulevard in south Denver.”

     “A Methodist Church?  On Colorado Boulevard?”

     “Yes.  My husband was pastor there.  We were there twelve years.”

     “I got married in that church.”

      “Really?”  Did my husband marry you?”

      “Maybe.  What was his name?”

     “McConnell.”

      “That sounds right.  We got married in 1970.”

      “Oh, then it wasn’t my husband.  We were there from 1973 to 1985.  But the man who preceded us was also named McConnell, Calvin McConnell.”

     “Yeah, that was him.  I remember now.”

     “There were consecutive preachers named McConnell at that church.”

     We were visiting in a great room in the Worthington, a retirement home in Ft. Collins.  We had just finished the first of four Veterans’ Day shows.  We agreed it was a small world, and I moved on to visit with another resident, as is our wont when we sing at retirement centers.

     The second lady looked very Japanese, but I can never trust my instincts on such things, so I refrained from trying konichi wah on her.  Instead, I asked where she was from.  At first, she said she was from California.  Hearing her speak English, I was pretty sure she was Japanese.

      I proceeded cautiously.  “Were you always in California?”

      “No, originally, I was from Hiroshima, Japan.”  Aha!  I thought so.

     “Do you speak Japanese?”

     “One hundred percent!” she said.  “Do you speak Japanese?” she asked me.  I held my thumb and forefinger about an eighth of an inch apart in reply.

     “Just like my son,” she said.  I got her name and phone number to give to the Goodwife who is always looking for someone to talk Japanese to.  We had a request to sing “Lida Rose” to another lady who said she could sing the descant to that song, so I moved on.  The story stops there for now, but I expect further developments.

       “Hiroshima?” asked the Goodwife. Yes, Hiroshima.  “How old was she?” 

     “Old enough to be living in a retirement center.”

     “She had to be there during or shortly after the bomb.”  The Goodwife hasn’t “dialed” that phone number yet, so we will have to wait to find out “the rest of the story”, Paul Harvey.

      It’s always interesting to visit with the old folks and get a snippet of their story.  In another retirement place, “Hillcrest” in Loveland, we visited with folks before we sang because the activities director changed our performance time from two to 2:30 p.m. without informing us of the change.  Ted played the piano and I visited with the old ladies, one of whom told us her husband was an air force vet but who wasn’t feeling up to coming down to listen to us sing.  I said we could probably go to her room and sing the air force song just for him if he would be up for that.  Oh, yes, that would be great.

     After our program, we were again visiting with the folk, this time with quite a few vets.  I lost track of the lady.  We inquired of some of the caretakers who were helping get residents back to their rooms.  We had succeeded in describing the lady well enough that an aide gave us the name and the room number.  Then the aide exclaimed,“There she is right now.”

     She had gone up to her room on the third floor, probably tidied things up a bit, knowing the female propensity for such things, and come back down.  She held a newspaper article about her husband’s WWII experience. 

     He was part of a crew that flew gasoline and food to a bunch of boys stranded on the German side of the battlefront.  He spent Christmas day helping load the airplane, then completed the mission of dropping supplies to the stranded guys while catching all kinds of flak, literally, from German forces. 

     She proudly displayed the article.  Rex asked for a copy of the article to give to an acquaintance who interviews WWII vets on their experience.  He records and edits the interview and makes copies for family or whoever is interested.  He archives the interviews for posterity.

     We capped off that day by riding the elevator to the third floor, accompanied by the lady, and singing the air force song to her husband.  We still had a Saturday performance in Berthoud, this time an hour-long program with the Valentine City Chorus and three other quartets.

    Along the way, we visited three restaurants where we sang for any veteran we could see.  On Friday, a man wearing a Korean Vet hat sat still for us while we sang the Navy anthem.  As we went to return to our table, another guy said, “Hey, I was in the army,” so we sang the army anthem to him. 

     A third man at another table said he too had served in the army, so we sang to him.  He allowed as how our version wasn’t correct.  A few minutes later, he approached our table with a napkin in hand.  His daughter had used her smart phone to look up the original first verse, “Over hill, over dale. . . .”  He had penciled it down on the napkin.  He wanted us to have the correct verse.

     On Saturday, we gathered early in the afternoon before going to Berthoud to call on a couple of other restaurants, the first, our favorite Tuesday-night watering hole, Applebee’s in Loveland.  Vets eat free on Veterans’ Day.  The help always seems glad to see us coming.  They shut off the loud music.  We sing.

      This time, we sang our Armed Forces Medley, which has the anthems for Coast Guard, Marines, Navy, Army, and Air Force.  Some of the Vets doffed their caps or waved when we sang the anthem for their branch.  The place was crowded.  It was probably as quiet as a sports bar ever gets during business hours. 

      We closed our impromptu concert with God Bless America, inviting all to sing the chorus with us, like the seventh-inning stretch at the baseball game.  A lot of the customers sang with us.  There were quite a few tears during that song.  We are hoping it was because the folks were touched by the patriotic moment, not because of the poor quality of our singing.

     We called on the Village Inn to sing to vets there before we headed to Berthoud.  One of our chorus members owns Village Inns in Cheyenne, Ft. Collins, and Loveland.  He provided the programs for the Berthoud concert, as well as 20%-off coupons to include with the programs.  He also gave the church’s soundman a $30 gift certificate for his time spent not only during the program, but the three-hour dress rehearsal on Tuesday night.  Brian is a generous man.

     The highlight of our Berthoud show was the standing ovation the chorus got when we sang our Armed Forces Medley.  We asked all the veterans to stand when their anthem was being sung.  Members of the chorus who are vets donned their hats and fired off salutes as we went into their anthem.  Our director drew a navy cap from his cummerbund, popped it on, turned to face the audience and snapped off a crisp salute before turning to direct us to the end of the medley.

     We closed that program with “God Bless America”, but we weren’t done.  The church ladies served refreshments in the basement and we had an afterglow where all the quartets plus a woman’s quartet from the church sang.  We still weren’t done.

     Back to Appleby’s we went.  It was still crowded with veterans and their families getting their free meals.  We repeated our earlier performance of Armed Forces Medley and “God Bless America”, this time our numbers enforced by other chorus members in attendance, including the Village Inn owner.

      We imposed on the customers and sang a few more songs.  Nobody seemed to object. Then we really were done.  We were all sung out.  Time to go home.  It will be a while before we forget this Veterans’ Day. 

      One of the church ladies said this was a much better way to treat the veterans than how we treated the Vietnam Veterans in the 1970’s.  Agreed.

        It was great fun for us, too.