Official Publication of Atlantic-Gulf Region 9 Sweet Adelines International www.sairegion9 April 2013

A s I was studying the map of Florida (yes, studying), I’m re-learning the ge-ography of it all over again. Be-ing your new Membership Co-ordinator, I want to know where all the Region 9 choruses are located. With a few exceptions, most choruses are along the Atlantic or Gulf Coast of Florida – no big surprise. The furthest northern chorus is Hilton Head Shore Notes, in Hilton Head, SC. The furthest southern chorus is Coldcoast in Miami. As of May 1 and as a result of Har-monic Progression, we can add two choruses furthest west on the map! Just in case you are rusty on your geography skills, the pan-handle is south of Alabama and the two choruses are on Central Time. These two choruses have a lot in common. They thrive on energy and resilience. They are both small and both have relative-ly new directors. Both choruses will be leaving Heart of Dixie, Re-gion 23, but both are equally ea-ger to become part of Atlantic-Gulf Region 9.

Harmony Shores Chorus, locat-ed in Panama City, FL, was char-tered in 1978. A small chorus, they are competing in 2013 in Chattanooga, TN (Region 23).

The chorus is un-der the direction of Barbara Heck-erson. She has been the director since 2010, and she is enrolled in the DCP. The

chorus has one registered quartet, Enchanté.

The chorus cut its first DVD re-cently. The music and script in-cludes patriotic songs, love songs, holiday songs and some comedy re-flects a recent show, “An Airfare to Remember”. A tradition of Harmo-ny Shores Chorus is to charter a bus to and from contest every year. They experience major bonding time and receive three new pieces of music and learning tracks on the way home. The chorus rehearses on Monday nights.

Harmonyshores.com

Pensacola Sound Chorus, lo-cated in Pensacola, FL, chartered in 1994. They are also a small chorus and competing in 2013 in Chattanooga, TN (Region 23). The chorus is under the direction of Tara Smith. She has been the director since 2010 and she is also enrolled in the DCP. The chorus currently has three regis-tered quartets, That Other Quar-tet, Just 4 Fun, and Artistic Liber-ty. “That’s half of our chorus”, says Tara Smith, “who are brave enough to stand in front of an au-dience and put their voices on display.”

Their last show, “Shades of Har-mony” was in June 2012. The theme of the show was built around songs with a color in

the lyrics. The headliner quartet was Dream, Region 23’s Region-al Championship Quartet in 2011 and 2012. The chorus rehearses on Tuesday nights.

pensacolasoundchorus.com Please help me welcome our newest choruses. Drop them a line on their Facebook pages.

Welcome Panhandle Choruses! By Kelly Chism, Region 9 Membership Coordinator

HARMONY SHORES

PENSACOLA SOUND

Top Hat Club members are Regional Quartet Champions or International Queens of Harmony Quartets from all over the world that are either current members of Region 9 Sweet Adelines or were members when they won Regional or International Competition. The Top Hat Club is proud to sponsor the Thursday Night Live! Show, which is an annual fund­raising show that starts off the Region 9 Competition weekend each year.

The Thursday Night Live! Show spotlights the current year competing quartets, previous year outgoing champs and sometimes up to two or three Sunshine District Barbershop Harmony Society quartets. We have even had special guest performances from Top Hat Club member quartets. Every performer on these shows volunteers their time and talent to help make this show such a huge success every year.

All proceeds from this show are split among the Sweet Adelines International­bound competing quartets that are representing Region 9, as well as the Young Women In Harmony (YWIH) Youth Festivals.

The Top Hat Club Chorus performs on the annual Thursday Night Live! Show where we induct the out-going regional quartet champions into the Top Hat Club each year.

We invite everyone to take a stroll down Memory Lane with the Region 9 Quartet Champions & Wild Card Quartets on our website, www.tophatclub.com. We feature Top Hat Club Regional and International Cham-pionship Quartets including current and previous Region 9 Quartet champions, Region 9 Quartets that have placed in the Top 15 at International, Championship Quartets that competed and won in other regions with a Region 9 member(s), Top Hat Club Championship Quartets that competed and won in other regions without members of Region 9 at the time they won, and the Region 9 International Queens of Harmony Quartets that represented any Region (including Region 9) at International Competition at the time they won, but are current or past members of the Top Hat Club.

Our website has a MEMBERS ONLY page for Top Hat Club Members where they can find rehearsal sched-ules, performance information, Membership Rosters, PDF versions of sheet music and mp3 versions of learn-ing tracks, request a Top Hat Club badge, and much more. Top Hat Club members should e­mail tophatclub@att.net for the Members Only Login and password and/or notify us if any corrections are changes are needed about the quartet information on the website. We wel-come any missing information, as well as JPG (or JPEG) pictures of the championship quartets, (the “official” picture from when the quartet won Regional and/or International Competition is preferred).

If you are a current or previous Quartet champion from ANY Region, are a member of Region 9, and would like to become a member of the Top Hat Club, our membership requirements and an on-line application form are on the “Join Us” page of our website.

For more information, please see our website at www.tophatclub.com to submit a “Contact Us” form or e-mail us at tophatclub@att.net.

Submitted by Sue Giesler, TNL Show Coordinator, Webmaster, and Past Top Hat Club Coordinator

Sound of Sunshine Remembers

Beth Vandergrift, an Extraordinary Woman By Diane Jackson

S ound of Sunshine Cho-rus is sad to announce

the loss of our Team Leader, Beth Vandergrift.

Described to me as a “fiery red head with a wonderful sense of humor”, Elizabeth Huether Van-dergrift affectionately know as “Beth” has left her mark on our hearts. Jackie Smiley (long time member of Sound of Sunshine) recalls “Beth had a wonderful sense of humor. Since I quite of-ten wore wigs to rehearsal (not always my own color) she started calling me Sybil. Only Beth would think of that. It was our private joke.”

Beth Vandergrift passed away on January 10, 2013 at her home in Ocoee, Florida. She was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey on February 20, 1943. Formerly of Edison and Bound Brook, New Jersey, Beth graduated from St. Peter's High School, New Bruns-wick in 1961. She entered the convent of the Sisters of Charity of Convent Station, New Jersey where she received an under-

received her Master of Science degree from Rutgers University. Beth taught at Para-mus Catholic Girls' High School, Para-mus, NJ and Hills-borough High School, Hills-borough, New Jer-sey. Beth began her employment in the private sector at Sil-ver Burdett Publish-ing Company in Morristown, New Jersey. She then joined the publishing company of Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich in Orlando Florida, holding the position of Senior Sci-ence Editor and Manager of the Science department before retir-ing in 2008.

An avid lover of music, Beth was a long time member of the Sweet Adelines International. In New Jersey she joined The Somerset Valley Chorus in 1975. She served on the Board of Directors, and was chorus president. Anita Barry (also a member of the cho-rus) said “I do remember meeting her at her first guest night. She was sitting next to me, cracked a joke and that was the beginning of a long and beautiful friendship.” In Region 19 (NJ) Beth was elect-ed regional secretary.

She was a current member of the Sound of Sunshine chapter in Or-lando, FL, Region 9. At the time of her death, she was the Team Leader of the chorus. She also served as Show Chair for about 4 years, and you always could find Beth helping the social team when it was party time. Beth

“What we have once enjoyed and

deeply loved we can never lose,

for all that we love deeply

becomes a part of us.”

— Helen Keller

loved to garden and one of her lifelong goals was to become a

"Master Gardner". She achieved this goal through courses from the University of Flori-da. Beth was married to Scott Vandergrift, the Mayor of Ocoee, Fl. Scott arrived one evening at chorus re-hearsal, accompanied by a minister and wit-ness and held a sur-prise Renewal of Vows ceremony on their wedding anniver-

sary. What a thrill that was for the chorus to share that moment with Beth. Beth finished writing the book The History of Ocoee and edited it after the death of author Nancy Maguire.

If we could have a lifetime wish a dream that would come true,

We would pray to God with all our hearts for a yesterday and you.

A thousand words can’t bring you back we know, because we tried; And neither will a million tears we

know, because we cried. You left behind our broken hearts

and happy memories too. But we never wanted memories,

we only wanted you.

F irst of all, we wish to con-gratulate our own Paula Barnett on her new job as Editor of Nine Online. We are so proud of all she does for O-Town Sound and now the Region.

O-Town Sound has recently wel-comed six new members - which will bring our total membership 39.

Our Singing Valentines fundraiser was very successful. We had two quartets out all day on February 14th, singing to lucky Singing Val-entine recipients in Seminole, Or-ange and Lake Counties – they even went as far from home as The Villages.

Coaching is in full swing. In Feb-

O-Town Sound or “Grow”-Town Sound? By Pat Feverston

ruary, we had Harriette Walters return to us. What a delight! In March, at our Retreat at Ce-darkirk Presbyterian Campground in Lithia, Jan Anton, baritone of our 2013 International Queens of Harmony, Touché, spent a day with us fine tuning our choreography. That day was nothing short of amazing!

Our Unsung Hero-ine program yield-ed two new “Super Women” in the chorus. Kris Brown and Liz Flynn were duly recognized for their individual (mostly unseen and far too lengthy to list here) contributions to the chorus. Congratulations and thank you for everything you

do for O-Town Sound.

We are looking forward to our se-cond regional competition. We have grown large enough to qual-ify for the midsize category this year. We’re very excited and are

eagerly looking for-ward to sharing the stage with all of the other talented cho-ruses in the region. Good Luck to all Re-gion 9 competitors!

We’re very lucky to have two competing quartets represent-

ing O-Town Sound this year:

Crosstown and From A to Z

If you find yourself in Orlando on a Monday night, visit our rehears-al. We’d love to see you. Visit our website at otschorus.com.

Membership Team with the newest OTS members

S ummer springs Chorus has a NEW HOME! In late Janu-ary, the chorus moved from Sum-merfield to the First Baptist Church of Belleview at 6107 S.E. Agnew Road, Belleview. We like our new "digs" and have a new member, Mary Williams, and have welcomed three new prospective members already! Membership growth in a new area was one of our top pri-orities.

Judi Stygar, our direc-tor, and CarolAnn Bagley, our coach, have been working us to the max as we fine tune our two competi-tion songs for competition in April. We have four "newbees" going for the first time and we want to make it their best experi-ence ever.

To say 'thank you" to our previous host church, St. John's Lutheran in Summerfield, we gave a fare-well concert at their Couples Ice Cream Social. Their appreciative standing ovation said it all. It wasn't long before we were scheduled for a "Soup and Sun-daes" Fellowship luncheon at our

"new home" in Belleview, where we shared the "magic of barber-shop harmony" with a large crowd. If we keep this up, we'll ALL be on diets!

Getting down to business, our Management team, under the leadership of Diana Ballard, has revised and updated the Chorus Standing rules and the Director's contract, for chorus approval. Soon, chorus members will be taking a survey via computer to

give opinions about chorus goals, etc. Election for seats on the Management Team will be held in April.

Though "spring has sprung", we need to "keep our ear to the

chords" and our brain on the "moves" as rehearsal times seem to fly by for our competition songs. We look forward to meet-ing our singing sisters again in the region, and wish everyone "good luck".

If you are in the Ocala-Belleview area, come to a Monday rehears-al, 1-3:30 p.m. Contact us by phone, Carolyn 352-307-3563, or visit our web site Summerspring-schorus.com.

New Home and New

Members for Summer Springs By Nancy Deforge

Membership growth in a

new area was one of our

top priorities.

Hilton Head

Organization

Benefits from

Barbershop By Marcia Cornell

T he Hilton Head Shore Notes are pleased to report that they had a very successful annual show, "Hearts Afire!", on February 9. They were thrilled to have "Touché," International Queens of Harmony, as their guest quartet, who were absolutely sensational!

As if that wasn't exciting enough, the icing on the cake was the fact that the show did so well, the Shore Notes were able to make a donation to PEP (Programs for Exceptional People) as part of

their community outreach this year. Clients of PEP are local residents suffering from life-long disabilities. This donation will aid in develop-ment of PEP's vocal musical program.

In early March the Shore Notes were very honored to have Char Gur-

ney, master director of the Scioto Valley Chorus, coach them at their

weekend retreat in St. Simon's Island. Char had coached them last fall

and was most helpful in continuing to prepare the group for competition

in April. Hard to believe it's a month away - see you all there!

Pictured are Caroline McVitty, Show Chairman (second from left), Kathy Jackson, PEP Finance Manager, and Shore Notes Show Committee member (right) awarding the check to the Executive Director of PEP.

The Joy of

Jacksonville

Harmony By Julie Reeve

G etting island fever yet? Being caressed by intoxicating tropical breezes emanating from the 2013 Honolulu Sweet Ade-lines International Convention and Competition? Jacksonville Harmony has “caught the cur-rents” and definitely will BE THERE because we’re entered in the Harmony Classic Competition on the very first night of Competi-tion! So come cheer us on, we’d love to see our region 9 sisters!

It does take a mighty village to get us prepared for our exciting, musical archipelago journey. Chief and foremost is Jean Bar-ford who has been our steady guide. Lea Beverly is also on board with Jean’s teachings and positions, so she has been a great ally. In early March Carol Kirkpatrick visited. She was Mas-ter Director of Pacific Sound and judges in the Expression Catego-ry. Thank you, Carol for finding the totally unique in our music! Adding to our education, Coach and Director of Velvet Hills Cho-rus in Colorado Springs Kathy

Carmody came to our spring re-treat along with Showmanship Judge Gina Kaiser.

Taking this all in and experiencing many “firsts” in their new SAI lives are JHC new members bass Ellen McNamara, baritone Madeline Queen and baritone Debbie Edwards who was Assistant Director from Women of Note. (Note to “Note”: THANK YOU!)

Also, leads Sherry Adams, Kathy Jackson and Maureen Mack from Hilton Head joyfully drive with our established members from Hilton Head (including JHC Team Lead-er Fran Russ and Sue Gordon) and can't wait to go to Hawaii with us—hooray! To you wahini warri-ors we say Aloha, and welcome!!

Kaye Weston and Darlene Friend thought a fine way to welcome our friends and singers is to give them BSE (breast self-examination) kits. These will be used in conjunction with an exist-ing citywide BSE program. Be-cause we have a number of breast cancer survivors among us, this is a terrific way to honor these women. Good going, Dar-lene and Kaye!

Darlene also reports that 50 new Teddy Bears were gathered to donate to the Jacksonville Sher-iff’s Office to have available to

Officers who have small children or infants placed in their care in emergencies.

One more thing that says love: Singing Valentines. Due to Judy

Shea getting us a very successful and high profile front-page arti-cle in our local news-paper, and to an up-beat and well-received television interview of our quartet Diva

(Tenor Paula Bartie, Lead Myra Newman, Bari Faye McLanahan, Bass Kaye Weston) about Sing-ing Valentines, we received 50 orders! We charged $50 per er-rand, or for $20 we would sing to a loved one over the phone. Congratulations to all the drivers, coordinators, quartets and publi-cists---job well done!

On a bittersweet note, we say goodbye to members Nina Robin-son and Lois Pike. They will be missed. Lois’ husband visited one night and listened in. He called the following letter Observances of a Spouse. We call it Obser-vances of Joy. Enjoy.

Observances of a Spouse

“I just had the chance to sneak into rehearsal to hear one of your new members, my wife Lois, sing with the Chorus. I am absolutely blown away by the remarkable quality and beauty of your voices. While I am floored by the musical sophistication of your singing, what really makes my heart sing is the joy I saw on your faces and heard in your sound. It really is all about the joy, isn't it? That we can each make music, combined as one in such an awesome re-sult is the highest form of joy and I thank you all for letting me lis-ten. Now my heart sings too.“

-Wilbur Pike

2/12/13

“It really is all

about the joy,

isn't it?”

Magic of Manatee: “A Night

to Remember” By Jacquie Humphreys

O h, what a night! -- Well, afternoon! We presented our annual show on February 9 at Neel Performing Arts Center on the campus of SCF in Braden-ton, FL. It was titled "A Night to Remember...A Comedy of Er-rors" and, as it turns out, was very appropriately named! The little glitches that happened ear-lier in the day with the lighting, sound system and microphones got worked out -- but we won-dered if we had jinxed it by us-ing that title for the show. But you all know how it goes -- things happen and the show must go on! And well it did.

In the first part of the show, we had a cleaning lady we just couldn't seem to get rid of who was dusting every-thing including us while trying to sing, cutting out the power with her vacuum cleaner cord, dragging a big ladder around the stage to fix lights, and finally blow-ing up the stage man-ager's booth!

We then had "stars and

starlets" interviewed on the Red Carpet and presented award-winning songs from mov-ies.

Our featured guest per-formers were The Ditch-field's "My Three Sons," former Florida Men's Bar-bershop Quartet Champi-

ons, and part of The Ditchfield Family Singers. They put on an outstanding show with great va-riety of music and sounds and are well-loved by so many devo-tees in the Bradenton/Sarasota area. We sure hope everyone enjoyed the show as much as we enjoyed presenting it!

Our next project, of course, is Competition in Daytona Beach. We are and will be working hard to show the judges who we are and what we can do! We have an upcoming per-formance at the Bradenton Women's Club and another on the beautiful Anna Maria Island for an island festival. What a glorious hobby we have that we can sparkle and sing both for the pleasure of others and our own in the Florida sunshine!

Choruses

Gainesville Harmony

Gainesville, Florida Diane Sherley & Chanda Morris,

Co-Directors

Goldcoast

Miami, Florida

Iris Cokeroft, Director

Gulf To Bay

Largo, Florida

Denise Helbig, Director

Harmony Shores

Panama City, Florida

Barbara Heckerson, Director

(Officially Region 9 on May 1, 2013)

Heart of Highland

Avon Park, Florida

Betty Meinholz, Director

Hilton Head Shore Notes

Hilton Head Island, S. Carolina

Beth Green, Director

Jacksonville Harmony

Jacksonville, Florida

Ann Gooch, Director

Magic of Manatee

Bradenton, Florida

Lois Van Beek, Director

O-Town Sound

Orlando, Florida

Kay Webb, Director

Pensacola Sound

Pensacola, Florida Tara Smith, Director

(Officially Region 9 on May 1, 2013)

Winds of Change at Spirit of

the Gulf By Linda Fairleigh

coached on! Of course Betty and Mike hit it off and we had a very productive weekend. He also brought to us our best fan, his wife Tracy, and his daughters Mackenzi and Madison as young members who are also great singers!

One month later – more fire – we had a singing engage-ment as part of a con-cert series. In 4 short weeks Mike and the chorus brought 12 songs up to par for the public! He admired our earrings and we ad-mired his tux! Best of all, we sang great and the audience wanted more!

On March 9 we held our spring show with featured quartet “Bling!” (who got three (3) standing ovations!

We also featured a doo-wop group, Brylcream.

In preparation for regional compe-tition we have also been coached by the “Au-some” Joe Connelly and a brand new coach who RE-ALLY impressed us – Brandon Guyton

(who coaches International Champion chorus Vocal Majority and is the baritone in Cross-roads). Mike attended the Region 9 Win-

ter Workshop in January and

Spirit can’t wait to introduce him

to the rest of the region in Dayto-

na. See you there!

E arly in 2012, Karen Brei-dert announced that she would retire from directing at the end of the year in order to fulfill her and her husband’s dream of living on the St. John’s River in Jackson-ville. While Spirit members were sad to lose such a dy-namic leader who helped the chorus earn five Top 10 Internation-al placements in six attempts as well as Most Entertaining Cho-rus in three of four, we fully supported her.

A search committee was formed. One of the candidates hap-pened to already live in Ft. Myers, is a two-time Barbershop quartet champion (currently the lead in Crossroads Quartet) and had experience in directing Bar-bershop. How lucky we are to have found Mike Slamka!

Throughout 2012 Spirit members cherished each “last” event with Karen such as evaluation-only in Daytona, local shows, coaching, fall retreat, Denver competition, our Christmas show where we attempted, through tears, to sing our closing number “Friends are Friends Forever,” and finally a joyful celebration/farewell party.

The first weekend in January with Mike as our director was a coach-ing weekend with Betty Clipman. Talk about baptism by fire – Mike had never directed us in the two contest songs we were being

Director Mike Slamka

Choruses

Cont.

Platinum Coast

West Melbourne, Florida

Elaine Haugan, Director

Song of the Coast

Ormond Beach, Florida Diane Johnson & Sue Reardon

Interim Co-Directors

Sound of Sunshine

Orlando, Florida

Nancy Lewis, Director

South Florida Jubilee

Plantation, Florida

James Kastler, Director

Southern Company

Brandon, Florida

Linda Verzosa, Director

Spirit of the Gulf

Fort Myers, Florida

Mike Slamka, Director

Summer Springs

Belleview, Florida

Judi Stygar, Director

Suncoast Harmony

Hudson, Florida

Amy Riddle, Director

Toast of Tampa

Temple Terrace, Florida

Tony DeRosa, Director

Venetian Harmony

Venice, Florida

Jim Shubert, Director

Women of Note

Wellington, Florida

Mitch Greenberg, Director

Currently Published Quarterly

January, April, July and September

JANUARY deadline Dec. 15 APRIL deadline March 15 JULY deadline June 15 SEPT deadline August 15

Please email your

submissions to: paulab902@gmail.com

A Look Inside the Mind of a Competing Quartet Singer…

By Lisa Schlinkert

Well, only 10 more sleeps before the quartets walk across the stage and I’m sure we’re all a little ON THE EDGE. Once competition is over we all may need a little GROUP THERAPY but we hope we will be creating SUNSATIONal sound when we get up to sing. It would be IMPETUOUS to try to predict the winners of this contest. I’m sure many quartets have had to travel CROSSTOWN to get to rehearsal and have worked on skills FROM A TO Z to prepare for the big day. We’re all hoping that our chords will ring all the way to the Milky Way GALAXY and back; and also that a LADYBUG won’t fly into our mouths while singing – that would suck! When each quartet walks on stage we hope that there will be an EXPLOSION! of cheers and applause from the audience. We will all be in QUATRO matching costumes and shoes, with impeccable hair and makeup. Once the winners are announced I’m sure they will be so TICKLED PINK that they jump 4JOY. Surely they will celebrate their big win by having a GIRL’S NIGHT OUT!

H ello Region 9! Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Paula Barnett and I’m the newly appointed editor

of Nine Online. I’m very happy to have this job and I’m definitely up for the challenge and raring to go.

By day I’m a marketing professional with a desktop publishing and

database background. I’ve worked in an entrepreneurial environment

for a total of 14 years and, as a result, I tend to think outside of the box.

I embrace change and immerse myself in technology.

On the Sweet Adelines side of things, I’ve been an SAI member here in Region 9 for almost 12 years. I sing with O-Town Sound where I’m a member of the Management Team as Public Relations Team Leader. I’m also the lead of Double Trouble.

Nine Online and the way you receive it will be going through some

exciting and, I’m hoping, sweeping changes. Watch your emailbox for

information, buckle your seatbelt and hang on! I’m taking this baby out

for a spin.

Meet The New Editor By Paula Barnett

Team Coordinator LISA DEPREZ

Gulf To Bay

Membership Coordinator

KELLY CHISM Chapter At Large

Communications Coordinator RHONDA PAYTON

Chapter at Large

Events Coordinator

SUE GIESLER Chapter at Large

Education Coordinator DAYVE GABBARD

Women Of Note

Marketing Coordinator

CATHY MOORE Suncoast Harmony

Finance Coordinator CATHY FREY

Spirit of the Gulf

Direc- tors’ Co-ordinator

DOE KALL Spirit of the Gulf

Your Regional Management

Team

Arranging Chair DORIS TWARDOSKY

Bylaws & Rules

LINDA GRONER

CAL Liaison GAIL BURKE

Chapter Coordinator

SARAH BICAN

Directors Certification GLORIA CHURCHILL

Nine Online Editor PAULA BARNETT

Nominating Chair NANCY HANSEL

Quartet Promotions

BLING!

Regional Awards Chair PENNY HIPKINS

Top Hat Club

DENISE HELBIG

Ways and Means CATHY FREY

Webmaster

CARTER MAYSILLES

YSF Liaison ANNIE SPENCE

Youth Activities

DENISE HELBIG

Regional

Committee

Chairs