More Memories From The Island

It seems rather silly now, but to say the least, some of us in Sing-Out South went to the World Sing-Out Festival in the summer of 1967 with a bit of an attitude (especially the guys).

We remembered what happened the summer before when lots of Sing-Out South members, attending the national Sing-Out conference in Estes Park, Colorado, were recruited to fill out the ranks of the two new Up With People national casts (Casts B & C), which were then being formed.

It was great for them, but it decimated the ranks of Sing-Out South and we spent most of the next year regrouping and reforming our cast.

So most of the guys attending decided the best way to counteract that potential problem at the Fort Slocum-David's Island conference was to stick together and not be split apart to stay with folks from other casts.

Our request seemed to puzzle, even tick off, some of the UWP folks organizing the conference. But eventually, they put all of us together in the large basement of one of the service buildings. I think we were the only people housed there. It had a very high ceiling with large shower and restroom facilities down the hall.It was also pretty stark, so we spent some time decorating it and leaving our mark....

Henry Swider puts the finishing touches on a large piece of art that Sing-Out South cast members created on the the wall of the balcony overlooking our sleeping area. It featured the conference's slogan of "Freedom Is On The Move."

Bob Sharp shows off some of the other art work we left on the walls of our living quarters at Ft. Slocum.

Rick Jolly shows off more of the wall art we left on David's Island. That's Dave Cannon, Bob Sharp and Gary Geiger covered by the sheet. Don't ask me why we posed the photo this way or what the sign falling out Rick Jolly's mouth was supposed to mean. It just seemed like a good idea at the time.

Another thing we did that seemed like a good idea at the time was using the word "Honduras" (you can see it in the photo above) whereever we went. Because the Sing-Out group "Harambee Africa" was at the conference (and Harambee means "pull together"), lots of people at the conference used that word. We decided to be a little different. So everywhere we went on the island (and we usually all went together) we would all count to three and yell out "Honduras." We did it when we did the garbage detail, even when we worked KP duty in the kitchen.

Of course, we got a lot of quizzical stares (especially when we did it before sitting down to breakfast or other meals). I think we probably embarrassed all the girls in our cast, but we had a good time with our own little inside joke.

That's (from the left, above)Randy Diamond, Kenny Swider, Dave Cannon, Rick Jolly, Mike Padgett and Bob Sharp posing for this picture.

Over four decades later I still get a charge out of looking at these photos which I took with my new Polariod SWINGER instant camera. The camera was also the source of a great practical joke that was played on me the first day we arrived at the conference...

What you see above is the bed I was to sleep on at the conference along with my tennis shoes, my camera and my foot locker with all my clothes, etc. After leaving the dorm area for a while that first day, I returned to find all these items missing, except for this photo of them taped to the floor.

After some good-natured razzing and some threats on my part, the guys all had a good laugh and brought back my stuff, although that did not stop a lot of short-sheeting and other pranks being played(including locking folks in the shower area)throughout our time there.

So I guess while we talked a lot about changing the world and other mature, lofty goals, we were still just a bunch of teen-age boys.

What are your memories of the World Sing-Out Conference? Please share them below or e-mail them to me at pat.nolan@dvl.com and I will share them here on the blog.

Honduras!