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Austintown Choir lends its voice to veterans
By JUSTIN WIER
AUSTINTOWN
The Austintown Fitch High School concert choir will travel to Virginia Beach in April, but enjoying a respite from the Northeast Ohio weather is not the trip’s focus.
On April 20, the choir will perform for veterans at the Norfolk Veterans Base in Hampton, Va.
It’s a tradition that dates back 45 years to 1972, started by former choir director Rosemary Kascher and Capt. Milton Kochert, a retired Navy officer who taught history at Fitch.
“Then they did it in ’73 and ’74,” said current choir director William Klein. “And here we are.”
The choir has traveled to several VA hospitals in the last 45 years. Klein said they generally stick to a rotation of Virginia Beach, Nashville, Tenn., Chicago and New York City. It’s different from typical choir and band trips to competitions or amusement parks. Klein said it has a more lasting effect as well.
“Kids remember the VAs and the impact they make forever,” he said. “Trophies ... they go in a box eventually.”
The kids will do an auditorium performance and then go into units with veterans who aren’t mobile. In Norfolk, they will perform for the spinal-injury and hospice units.
The auditorium performance peaks with a performance of “God Bless the USA,” Klein said. They begin the piece singing in a half-circle and then Klein moves out of the way so students can go out into the audience and kneel down by an individual veteran.
“I tell them, ‘Don’t cry because they don’t need to see us crying; they’re in bad enough shape,’” Klein said. “So we do that, and then we get on the bus, and it’s just waterworks for an hour.”
They also perform songs that were popular when the veterans were younger. This year’s performance will feature a medley of musical theater songs including songs from “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” “Hello Dolly” and “Annie.”
Klein said the response is incredible.
“You’ll get a lot of vets who are just miserable,” he said. “They don’t want to be there, but they’re stuck in a wheelchair and the nurse brought them down. And by the end, they’re the ones that don’t want to let us go.”
Klein said as far as he knows, Fitch is the only concert choir with the primary mission of performing for veterans. And with all that veterans do for the country, he said singing for 45 minutes is the least they can do.
He said the kids buy into the mission, and they benefit from it as well.
“I think it’s good to expose kids to be comfortable with veterans,” Klein said. “When I was in high school, I wouldn’t just walk up to a veteran and thank them for their service. These kids can when they’re out in public, not in a choral setting, they can and do go up to veterans, so I think that exposure is really important, too.”