My brother Steve called me last night with the news that our high school choir director, Delma Wright, passed away earlier this week. She was 90 years old, so it was not any sort of surprise or the kind of untimely death that inspires that sort of pain and sorrow, and yet the news hit me much harder than I would have expected- and for the last 24 hours I have been inundated by choir memories galore…. most of which I have not consciously thought of in decades…. and all of which have Miss Wright at the heart of them.
The story begins in 1974, the year I finished 8th grade and had looked forward to 9th grade because Decorah Junior High was grades 7, 8 and 9 – so ninth graders were the Big Men (and Women) on campus! But then my dad accepted a call to a church in a town I had never heard of: Atlantic. It was a pretty enough town but not nearly as picturesque as Decorah – and I was a painfully shy, awkward kid who had a hard enough time making friends and fitting in without facing the prospect of relocating to a completely unfamiliar place. And what made things worse was that in Atlantic, the 9th graders were not at the top of the junior high but instead were at the bottom of the high school. So as the start of the school year approached, I was vacillating between melancholy and dread and honestly wondering if there was any way in the world that I was going to be happy in this new town and school.
As it turns out, those four years in Atlantic High School were great. . . and one of the first significant bits of reassurance I received was the first time I walked into the choir room of A.H.S. First I should say that I was coming from a powerhouse choral program at Decorah Junior High with a formidable director named James Sextor. He was so good and so demanding that he had our 8th grade choir singing 8-part music. (And well.) But he was also a really scary guy who could chew you up and spit you out if need be. (When James Sextor walked into a room, Benito Mussolini would run and hide.) So imagine my delight and relief when I first met Delma Wright, who welcomed me so warmly and enthusiastically before she had even heard me sing or play the piano. I immediately knew that her 9th grade choir was going to be home for me in this scary new school- and it was exactly that. It’s where I ended up meeting some of my favorite classmates, and where I first began to feel like I had a chance of fitting in – and maybe even shining. And for a shy, awkward, bespectacled bookworm, that meant everything.
One of the things I most appreciated about Miss Wright is how she ran a tight ship – almost as tight as Mr. Sextor back in Decorah – but she also knew how to make things fun. Her personality was very down-to-earth and open-hearted, and it was very clear that she loved her job and everything about it. And now in retrospect I appreciate how well she did despite a couple of strikes against her. First of all, her music degree was primarily for piano rather than vocal music, so she was operating outside of her comfort zone to some extent, but you would hardly know it from the assurance with which she did her job. Secondly, I don’t know the specifics but Miss Wright had something wrong with her eyes – some sort of condition in which her gaze would suddenly shift down and to the side – plus generally poor eyesight – which had to have made reading music scores incredibly challenging and frustrating. I will always admire how she bore that difficulty without complaint. (By the end of her life, she was completely blind- and I suspect that she bore that cross graciously as well.)
There are so many great memories of choir with Miss Wright – including the tradition of singing the Hallelujah Chorus at the end of each Christmas concert – and the fun of letting our hair down, musically, every spring with Stage Show, in which the choir would sing songs from the world of musical theater. And I am grateful for the invitation she extended to any of us in the choir to compose something. The group ended up singing my very first composition, a setting of “Lord, make me an instrument of Thy Peace” with me on the podium and her on the sidelines, cheering me on. (That’s a moment I will never ever forget.) And then there was Music Contest, and my most potent memory of Miss Wright was of how incredibly busy she was playing piano for so many of us- and yet staying perfectly calm as she carefully made her way from one event to the next. She was a calming influence for all of us, and nowadays when I’m in the midst of a frantic day at Solo & Ensemble, there’s always a moment or two when I stop, take a deep breath, and do my best to channel Miss Wright and her calm spirit.
But more than anything, I think of Miss Wright’s joyous and fun-loving spirit, and the love of music which she both embodied and modeled for the rest of us. And I know that I am echoing the gratitude felt by so many singers who came before me – and who came after me – over the course of the thirty years that she directed choirs at Atlantic High School. There are so many of us whose high school years were immeasurably brightened by this great lady – and who feel so blessed to be counted among her great collective choir.
pictured above: Yours truly, Micheal Wolfe, and Tom Williams- one third of that year’s Boy’s Ensemble. And how about those outfits, which scream 1976 ?!? I picked this photo because it was such a vivid reminder for me of the great fun we had not only in choir but also in the small ensembles which were such an important part of the program at A.H.S.