Summer youth project

The Chorus of the Plains has been involved in a different approach to young people. Charlie Gardner developed this project. Of course, several people got involved since Charles had to leave for Ireland to be married and have a marvelous honeymoon.

The first step was to place an advertisement in the newspaper and contact all the area high school teachers and ask them for a list of young men who seemed to like to sing and enjoy music. The three city teachers responded with a list from each school.

Step two: Write to each young man and invite him to sing with us at a special time. (Hastings has a very active summer sports program that involves most of the young men on Monday evenings. Therefore, we elected to start this singing at 9:10 p.m. and end at 10:00 p.m.) The letter stated the time and listed some of the other young men who were invited so they could plan to come together.

Step three: Give each man a certificate for singing with the Chorus of the Plains.

Step four: Follow up with a letter thanking them for singing with us and inviting them back for the next week. This letter's format was different from the initial invitation.

Step five: Make sure that each young man feels that he is welcome to come and sing; sing special songs for young people and to demonstrate their young sound to "old men."

Step six: Put these names on a mailing list so they are aware of singouts, bulletins and other special information for the summer and for the school year.

Step seven: Offer them membership, if they wish, to the best singing organization in the world for half price since they are students.

Step eight: Make sure that each young man gets a ticket for our show this fall to see and hear The Classic Collection.

The newspaper ads brought in two phone calls and eight young men responded to the letters.

The first night of our meetings, there was one; the second night, five, but not the first one; the third night, five, but only two returns from the previous nights; and, finally, the fourth night saw a total of 10. Two of these young men have been with us for three nights.

On the following Monday evening, all 12 of them got on the stage and sang "Honey-Little 'Lize Medley." The chorus gave them a standing ovation. What a JOY.

Four of those young men also promised to sing a special song that they sang in contest for high school. We are all looking forward to hearing them.