A Giraffe has been sighted
in WA |
When the Total Experience Gospel Choir files in, you can see it’s kids—mostly high school and junior high kids, but one who’s only seven years old. Then they start to sing and you and everybody else in the hall, the church, the theatre find yourselves swept up by their rocking, driving, joyous sound. You’re having the Total Experience. The person to thank for the music, for the joy, and for 20 years of devotion to Seattle’s kids is volunteer director Pat Wright. Back in 1971, Wright was teaching Black gospel music in the public schools. She was fired. Rather than abandon the choir she had developed at the school, she simply moved it to a nearby church. The Total Experience Gospel Choir was born. Over 500 children have been in this choir. They keep changing, growing up and going off—40% of them to earn higher degrees—but Pat Wright is always there. |
“I am very concerned not only about the child’s vocal chords but about the whole child,” says Wright, who has helped choir members get shoes, clothes and regular boosts of self-esteem. Today the choir is famous, the kids have sung all over the US, in Nicaragua, Canada and the Bahamas. Still in all the years, the choir has gotten only one grant, back in 1980. Today even the scholarship coffer, which helped dozens of kids go on to higher learning, is empty. The kids, however, are full of the Total Experience spirit, thanks to Pat Wright’s devotion. |
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