Moving, by Carol White

While thinking about the word “Moving” I find myself drawn to emotionally moving experiences more than physically moving from city to city.  One of the most moving experiences of my life came about in 1986.  Here are some of the events leading up to it:

In 1980 I was living in Denver, Colorado.  February of that year was the initial meeting of PFLAG Denver that I attended and the first meeting of several parents who were soon thereafter to become dear friends.  I have already written a story for this group about the beginnings of PFLAG and the events in 1984 that led to the formation of the 140-voice PFLAG Festival Chorus that sang for the national convention in Denver, which was the first time that I had conducted in 16 years since being fired from the church.

Today’s story is about the women singing in that chorus who wanted to continue to sing together, and became the Denver Women’s Chorus.  Immediately following the PFLAG Festival Chorus, the 70 women decided to continue rehearsing at St. Paul’s UMC in Capitol Hill.  Naturally, the very first performance of this new DWC was at a PFLAG meeting in December with Christmas songs.

Then came the big night — our very first concert as a women’s chorus, which we held at North High School auditorium.  This was exciting stuff!

We got Jane Vennard to be our MC.  Jane is the sister of Dottie Lamm, who was married to the Governor of Colorado, Dick Lamm.  Jane had been married to a gay man at one time, so she was a member of PFLAG, and we had an “in” at the governor’s mansion, which was very neat.

Leading up to this concert, one of the things that we talked about in rehearsals was that when you sing, you are not to pronounce the letter “R” in a song.  For instance, the word “mother” would be “mothuh” and “father” would be “fathuh”, etc, etc.

Well, Judith and I went to Laguna Beach, California, to visit Bishop Mel Wheatley and his wife Lucile for a few days.  We stayed at a hotel right on the ocean and watched the seagulls flying by.  When we got back to rehearsal, I told the chorus that one of the seagulls flying by was singing, “I enjoy being a gull.”  Would you believe that we actually sang that song at that North High concert, and one of the chorus members dressed up all frilly and danced while we were singing it.  It was actually tongue in cheek.

Anyway, after the concert we were so high and so excited that we had a big cast party over at the home of one of the singers whose name was Susan.  Jane Vennard was dancing on the piano bench.  We were all dancing so much that the old North Denver house was actually shaking, and I remember forming a long line and dancing out into the yard singing “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.”

Later came the Paramount Theater concert with Barbra Higbie as the special guest.  One of Judith’s friends brought a straight male friend with him, and of course, this was the first gay concert he had ever been to, and he asked John, “Why do they sing?”

We tried to answer that question first by saying that it’s the title of a Holly Near song, “We are singing for our lives.”  Then Judith reminded me of this saying:  “A bird does not sing because it has an answer.  It sings because it has a song.”  And I said that gay and lesbian people have always had a song, but the tragedy of it is we have never been able to sing it before, and the beauty of it is that now we can!

At the end of that Paramount concert Judith and I got to ride to the cast party at the Hilton Hotel downtown in one of those horse-drawn carriages with Barbara Higbie and her partner.  That was a blast.

Then came our first GALA Choruses Festival in Minneapolis!  The Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses had formed a few years earlier from its beginnings in San Francisco to several gay men’s choruses around the country, and they had had their first choral festival in New York City.  This was their second time to get together to sing.  We were the only women’s chorus there, along with 16 gay men’s choruses. 

We boarded the plane in Denver, and as we attained cruising altitude at about 30,000 feet, Judith and I went up and down the aisle passing out a quote for each member to keep.  It read like this:  “Years from now, when you are old and grey, you will be able to look back and say that ONCE in your life you gave EVERYTHING you had for justice.”

Soon we were on the stage at Orchestra Hall in downtown Minneapolis performing to a sold-out crowd, when Suzanne Pierson was singing a solo on a song that she had written, “No Child of Mine,” and she forgot the words.  The chorus came in with her and saved her.  So while our performance as a chorus may not have been perfect, still, afterwards when we walked into a restaurant on the downtown mall in Minneapolis, we would get a standing ovation from the men singers who were sitting at tables in that restaurant, and they would say, “Oh, the Brahms, Oh, the Brahms.”  They evidently loved the Brahms numbers that we sang.  And they really appreciated our being there.

But the final night in Minneapolis was the piece de resistance.  We were on stage with all of the men’s choruses, about 1,000 singers as I remember, and there was an orchestra on the floor in front of the stage and they had hired Philip Brunelle to conduct and we were singing a commissioned work by John David Earnest called “Jubilation.”  Woah!  Unbelievable highlight!

After the concert, some of the members were so excited that they actually JUMPED off the risers rather than stepping down.  And then we ALL went out into the plaza outside the hall and, as one member later said, we “sang to the heavens what the hall would not contain.”  Close to 1,000 of us standing there singing and singing and singing, every song we could think of. 

That was moving!  That was the highlight of my life to that time.  And most of us returned to work in Denver and could not even tell people where we had been because we were still not out, for fear of losing our jobs and the support of our families and friends. 

Times have changed in the last 30 years.  Judith and I are retired and out to everyone now.  The Denver Women’s Chorus is still singing.  The Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses has produced a Festival every three or four years since then, from Seattle to Denver to Tampa to San Jose to Montreal and others, and finally back to Denver in 2012.  In fact, they were so impressed with the facilities here at the DCPA  that they are coming back in 2016 so that they can use Boetcher, Temple Buell, and Ellie Caulkins Opera House all at the same time for simultaneous concerts all day and all evening for four days in a row over the July 4 holiday in our great city. 

The number of choruses participating actually doubled at each festival from 16 to 32 to 67 to 120, and has finally leveled out at over 190 choruses around the world with over 10,000 singers. 

I am registered as a single delegate for the July 2016 festival, and if you like choral music, you can go to their website and register too.  IT WILL BE A MOVING EXPERIENCE! 

© 2 Nov 2015 

About the Author 

I was born in Louisiana in 1939, went to Southern Methodist University in Dallas from 1957 through 1963, with majors in sacred music and choral conducting, was a minister of music for a large Methodist church in Houston for four years, and was fired for being gay in 1967.  After five years of searching, I settled in Denver and spent 30 years here as a freelance court reporter.  From 1980 forward I have been involved with PFLAG Denver, and started and conducted four GLBT choruses:  the PFLAG Festival Chorus, the Denver Women’s Chorus, the Celebration ’90 Festival Chorus for the Gay Games in Vancouver, and Harmony.  I am enjoying my 11-year retirement with my life partner of 32 years, Judith Nelson, riding our bikes, going to concerts, and writing stories for the great SAGE group.