A Santa Fe SOS Christmas

During my years in Sing-Out, there always seemed to be some kind of conference being held or planned, either on a state, regional or national basis.

And Sing-Out South was always well represented.

That includes the Jones sisters (Debbie, Candy and Pam) seen above with Bill Cates. It was late December, 1966, and according to the NASHVILLE BANNER, they were among 85 delegates from Nashville who attended a year-end Sing-Out conference held in Santa Fe, New Mexico. More than 1,500 Sing-Out cast members and others from all over the nation and the world attended, including all three traveling national Sing-Out casts.

Being in the southwestern United States, you might think Santa Fe would be a warm weather destination such as what you see in the photo above. But the city is nestled 7,000 feet high in the Sangre de Christos mountains. The weather the week of the conference back in December, 1966 was reportedly snowy and quite cold (with near- zero temperatures at times).

You can almost see how frigid it was by looking at the folks in the photo below which appears to have been taken outside a Holiday Inn in Sante Fe. The photo features the entire Jones family, along with Bill Cates, and the reigning musical superstars of the Sing-Out movement at that time, the Colwell Brothers (and a few other folks I can't identify)

But while the weather was very cold, the fervor of those attending the conference from Sing-Out South was heating up according to an article by Peter Pence in THE NASHVILLE BANNER.

Speaking to the entire conference on New Year's Eve 1966, Marlene Echols of Sing-Out South said: "We're going to take a new spirit back to Nashville. Sing-Out South has been kind of dragging and we couldn't figure out why. But we found out at this conference what it was---we had lost some of the spirit of Moral Re-Armament. We're going back with a new spirit to sing out in 1967."

Added Mike Glasgow of SOS: "This is the year we hope to find 50,000 young people who are committed to taking the spirit of Moral Re-Armament to every corner of the world. We want people who will set a pattern in everything they do, in every way they live their lives, by living for God."

Another SOS member, Ollie Jones put it this way: "MRA gives me a purpose to serve. I live for other people in order to help them. By helping them, I help myself. I CARE for people now and it is not a selfish care. I hope Sing-Out can bring about a unity of the races. That's the thing about Sing-Out. It includes everyone. If it excluded anyone, it wouldn't work."

Finally, SOS member Bobby Johnston (seen in the photo below)added these comments: "It's a real challenge to live these (MRA)standards (absolute honesty, purity, unselfishness and love). It's not easy. It doesn't mean you don't fall. But when you fall, you can stand up again, and you've got friends to help you and stand with you, and you are a better person than when you started."

Bobby apparently had lots of friends in Sante Fe, as the photo above shows him opening presents (with help from Jeff Jones) during what appears to be a birthday party held for him.

Thanks for all these wonderful photos to the Jones family (especially Pam who provided them to me). I will indentify those I recognize in each photograph, but I urge all of you who were there, or anyone else, to help me by posting your IDs of folks I don't recognize or mis-identify.

Cabot Wade and Ollie Jones are in the foreground with Bill Cates, Judy Engels and Mrs. Engels in the background. I can't identify the other lady.

Jim Troutner, Ollie Jones and Pam Jones Hazelwood are in this photo. I can't ID the guy in the back of the photo in front of the door.

That's Mike Glasgow to the far left of the photo along with Debbie Jones and Alfred Saffell (in the foreground). I believe Candy Jones Wirt is the person obscured in the photograph. I can't identify the others.

Former SOS Cast Director Dan Skuce talks with Mrs. Jones, while Mrs. Engels is also in the photo.

Buster Barry is in the center of this photo to the right of the Christmas tree with Cabot Wade and Ollie Jones in the foreground. Mrs. Engel I think is also in this photo, but I can't identify the other young guy in the shot.

If any of you in these photos, or anyone who attended the Sante Fe conference, have stories and memories to share please do so below or send them to me (pat.nolan@dvl.com)and I will post them here for everyone to share.

I make a particular plea to my old buddy Steve Hinton, who I recall had a rather harrowing plane ride on the way back to Nashville.

While we enjoy these photos from a simpler time and place some 44 years ago, Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year in 2010 to all!

A Night Of Christmas Carols & The Book Of Genesis

One of my favorite Christmas memories dates back to 1968.

It was Tuesday, December 24,the night before Christmas. I joined a group of my Sing-Out South friends at the home of fellow cast member, Patty Mayer. We came together to do some Christmas caroling, going door-to-door in her Green Hills-area neighborhood to raise money for the Fannie Battle Day Home (which is now the oldest child care center in the nation).

Caroling for the Fannie Battle Day Home was (and remains) a long-time Nashville tradition on Christmas Eve. Being in Sing-Out together, you would have thought we would have gone Christmas caroling every year. But this is the only time I can remember doing it with other cast members. And I am sure I remember this night so well because of what happened later that evening.

While we were out caroling, the Apollo 8 astronauts had gone into in orbit around the moon. For the first time in the history of man, they got to see the picture above, our beautiful green and blue earth rising up above the moon.

Later, when we returned to Patty's home, we all got some hot chocolate and sat down to watch an unprecedented live television broadcast. It featured live pictures of the lunar surface beamed back to earth from the astronauts' spaceship while they each read portions of the first ten verses of the Book of Gensis from the Bible. Here courtesy of YouTube is that part of the broadcast....

Even today, almost 41 years later, I still get goose bumps thinking back and remembering that special Christmas Eve and that wonderful moment in history featuring a broadcast that was at that time, the largest ever in American history. To put it all in perspective, here's a report from WGN-TV (courtesy of YouTube) that contains some insights about how the Gensis reading came to be read on the broadcast and the reflections of Jim Lovell, one of the members of the Apollo 8 crew...

And just like the Apollo 8 crew did 41 years ago, I close wishing everyone "good luck and a Merry Christmas. God bless all of you...all of you on the good Earth."

A Nashville Christmas Tradition

If you grew up in Nashville during the 1950s and 60s, one of the biggest annual Christmas traditions was riding over to Centennial Park to view the Nativity Scene in front of the Parthenon.

Despite the strange juxtaposition of the Christ Child being placed in front of a pagan Greek temple (which never occurred to me as a child or a teenager),the people of Nashville truly loved the gift of department store owner Fred Harvey, who donated the Nativity Scene to the city in 1953 and continued to add pieces to it for several years. The original Nativity Scene was estimated in value at $20,000 in 1953 when it was first erected.

An article in THE NASHVILLE BANNER in 1957 estimated at least one million people annually "came from near and far" to seen the Nativity Scene, which was particularly striking at night with all the changing-colored lights reflecting off the larger-than-life albaster figures while Christmas carols played softly in the background.

I do have one Sing-Out South memory to share about the Parthenon Nativity Scene. It was Christmas,1967 and I was dating Laura Jones (now Rutter)from the cast. We had been to either a dance or a basketball game at Father Ryan and then went by the Nativity Scene. It was particularly beautiful that night because it was snowing, which added even more luster to this wonderful holiday scene.

Little did we know but this would be the last time the Nativity Scene would be on display in Nashville. By the next year in 1968 according to George Zepp in his book called THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF NASHVILLE: "the annual exposure to Nashville's fluctuating winter weather had weakened and eroded the statuary so much that the diorama wasn't fit to display outdoors. The display was sold by the city to an advertising agency which placed in a Cincinnati shopping center where it was reportedly used for only two seasons before being discarded as irreparably worn out."

How sad, but what great memories still continue to flow for those of us who saw the Nativity Scene each holiday season while we grew up in Nashville.

Of course, the 1950s and 60s were very different times. A religious display like this in a public park today would be a source of likely controversy and perhaps litigation. But that doesn't mean Nashvillians have no place to go anymore to enjoy the holidays lights or the reason for the season.

For the past quarter century or so, the place to be during the holiday season has been the Gaylord Opryland Hotel where according to a recent article in THE TENNESSEAN(December 13) "the outside light display features about two million sparkling globes, while inside, the botanical atriums are awash with holiday wonder, including water shows synchronized to holiday songs (and) horse-drawn carriage rides among the decorations.."

Almost as a tribute to Nashville Christmases past, there is also an outdoor nativity display from 5 to 10 p.m. daily on the hotel grounds. And all this is just the beginning, as Opryland has plenty of holiday shows to attend (including the annual Country Christmas show, as well as ICE! featuring A Charlie Brown Christmas and the Rockette Show from Radio City Music Hall in New York City).

According to THE TENNESSEAN article, at Opryland you can also place an e-mail to Santa and take a trip through a 1950s Christmas with a live band, dancing girls, icebergs and Santa's lost sleigh (must be a very different '50s from what many of us grew up in :)).

Many of the outdoor light displays are free of charge as you drive your car around the Opryland complex. But the traffic stretches for miles so be ready to take your time!

There are of course paid tickets available for the shows, while parking to go inside the Hotel or to attend the shows can range from $18 to $25.

Do you have Nashville Christmas memories to share? Please leave them below and come back to this blog next week for another special Nashvillle Christmas memory from Christmas Eve, 1968.

A White Christmas!

Nashville in the 1960s

A White Christmas!

It's doesn't happen very often in Nashville. In fact, it hasn't occurred here since way back in 1969. That's 40 years ago!

According to an Associated Press article (November 26) I found at NewsChannel5.com there's only about a 13% chance of it happening this Christmas (about the same odds as Louisville, KY and surprisingly slightly better than the odds this year for New York City, NY which are only 10%).

I do clearly remember the White Christmas snow in Nashville in 1969. Having started college at Peabody that fall, I was no longer active in Sing-Out South, but that didn't keep a bunch of us, both current and former cast members,(Molly, Henry, Gene, Debbie and others) from the getting together and going to Midnight Mass (I found my non-Catholic friends particularly liked staying up late and attending this service).

My memory was we went to the chapel at the old Saint Thomas Hospital where then-Father Ed Johnston said the Mass. It was wonderful gathering up and around the altar and seeing old friends, especially my high school friends who were coming home after their first semester away at college.

But it was also a bitter-sweet time. One of my Father Ryan classmates had been killed in a single-car wreck just after coming home, and then my Aunt Dot Shelton died of a heart attack just few days later. We had buried her on December 24.

As I came home in a driving rain that night, the idea of a White Christmas didn't look very promising, but sure enough, when I got up in the morning, there was 2 inches of snow on the ground!

Now it used to snow a lot more in Nashville than it does today. In fact I can remember a White Christmas and a White New Years back in 1963 with big snowstorms blanketing the city with several inches of the white stuff twice in a week. So little did I realize on that December 25 morning so many years ago, I was looking at something that would not happen again in our town for at least 4 decades.

In the house I grew up in, "White Christmas" always meant this Christmas Album by Bing Crosby. My father purchased this LP back in the early 1960s, and it just wasn't Christmas until he brought out the record player, put it under the Christmas tree, and we started playing this album over and over again. How my father loved Bing Crosby!

Keeping with the tradition, it's still not Christmas in my house until Bing begins to sing, although now it's on a CD and usually I am playing it in my car or on my computer. So many memories of Christmas' long, long ago go through my mind every time I play it. Here, courtesy of YouTube, is the title song of the album, WHITE CHRISTMAS, as it first appeared in the movie HOLIDAY INN back in the 1940s....

To sum it all up, I would say December has always been a magic month for me, and not just because of Christmas.

My birthday is December 13th and my father's was the 14th. Now my grandson, Shaun, has a December 19th birthday (he will be 3 this year), while his dad (my son-in-law, Mike Rosenhagen) oberves his birth the very next day on December 20th.

How interesting and special to have the generations with their birthdays back to back on days during the holiday season in December!

Happy Holidays to all!

Please come back next week for another Sing-Out South holiday memory.

If you have any memories to leave please do so below or e-mail them to me. Thanks!

A Nashville Christmas Tradition For 57 Years!

This Friday evening (December 4) the city will officially kick off the Holiday Season with the annual Nashville Christmas Parade downtown, sponsored by Piedmont Gas. The festivities begin with the city's Tree Lighting ceremony in front of the Metro Courthouse.

Since the Parade is just about as old as I am, it's always been a part of my life. That includes when I was in Sing-Out South in December, 1966 when cast members helped build and performed on a float in the parade.

In the 1960s the parade was different. It was held on Sunday afternoons (that changed after the Tennessee Titans came to town). The parade route was also different, beginning at Centennial Park near Vanderbilt then coming downtown via West End Avenue and Broadway. To revive some memories, here's a video of the Nashville Christmas Parade from back in the 1960s, courtesy of YouTube and with a little Burl Ives thrown in to put you in the holiday spirit of Christmases long, long ago...

What I remember about being with SOS in the Christmas parade in 1966was it was pretty cold (things don't change, the temperatures will be in the 30s this year on Friday night). But even though I remember the sun was out in 1966, it was a long time to perform outside in just your Sing-Out stage uniform (dress shirts, ties and blazers for the guys, those A-line jumpers for the ladies).

Of course, we also performed the same songs over and over again (that what you do in a parade) and since we didn't have a sound system I think it was kind of hard for folks to really hear us especially with all the nearby bands in the parade.

Finally, the flat bed truck that was a part of our float was not built for a lot of people performing choreography on it. We included some parts of our SOS stage on the float, including those very heavy steps.

I don't think we had time to do any practicing on the float before the parade and it was something of a shock when we all started doing our movements and the float seemed to be suddenly moving and shaking so much some cast members almost fell off. I think we faked the choreography the rest of the way. :)

All this is probably why I don't remember Sing-Out South ever performing in the Christmas Parade again. We did receive a overall good response from folks along the parade route, but really,just like today,everyone comes to the Christmas Parade to see this guy, Santa Claus, not us....

I wish I had a photo of SOS on that Christmas Parade float. I do have a shot of the other float we made when we were in the 4th of July Parade in Kingston Springs. I think it's already posted here on the blog somewhere (check July).

I have some vague memories of being involved in making the Christmas Parade float. We were in the basement of the Barrys' home over on Clairmont Drive. I can't remember anything about what the float looked like or what the wording on it said. All I remember was doing the work while listening to the Vanderbilt basketball game.

Vanderbilt was playing at Western Kentucky that evening. It was the first game for the Commodores without one of their greatest players ever, Clyde Lee, who had graduated the year before. With Western dedicating its new Diddle Arena, nobody gave Vandy much of a chance in the game against the highly touted WKU squad. But Vanderbilt won anyway! Maybe I can't remember anthing else about that night because I was wrapped in the game. :)

I have confirmed all this by going to Vandy's basketball media guide and looking up the date and details of the game which was played on December 1,1966. That would have been just a few days before the Christmas Parade on the first Sunday in December that year.

Isn't it amazing how your mind work (or doesn't) to remember things!

My family is always amazed (and somewhat annoyed) that I can remember things by what sporting events were occurring at the time. If and when they read this posting, I know they'll be having those same feelings again. :)

Happy Holidays!

If you have SOS Christmas Parade memories to share please leave them below or e-mail them to me.

I will be back with another SOS Holiday memory story next week!