First Posted: 3/27/2015
SPENCERVILLE — The Civic Center was at a capacity crowd Saturday night for the performance by the rock band Foreigner. Seats were sold out. Included in that crowd were 24 Spencerville High School students and choir director, Janis Griffin.
Griffin was contacted and told the group wanted 24 children to sing backup. The students were Taylor Harris, Chris Adams, Trevor Osting, Austin Keiber, Dylan Shelhart, Skyler Ward, Evan Pugh, Kristen Logan, Whitney Bender, Schylar Miller, India Miller, Cindy Stetler, Rebecca Fett, Olivia Miller, Rebecca Stetler, Allison Bowsher, Evan Barnett, Garrett Hittle, Nate Johnson, Leah Woods, Ashley Greber, Taylor Koenig, Amber Stapleton and Cali Conrad.
“I am using our Varsity Singers, and then added seniors to get the number up to 24,” Griffin said. “This is a great opportunity.”
The students were eager to do this, even if they did not know them.
“Most of them didn’t have a clue,” Griffin said with a laugh.
Once she played the song that they were to sing backup on, “I Want To Know What Love Is” the teenagers recognized the song and said they’d heard of them.
“They gave us a YouTube site and said watch this and learn it. That is how we know what we are supposed to do” Griffin said.
Griffin was instructed to have the students all wear the same color.
“No robes, just the same color, after all, this is a rock concert,” Griffin said.
The students were onstage for this song, which was the next to the last song of the night.
“We are spending six hours with them and most of the concert we will be tucked backstage,” Griffin said.
The school will benefit from this as well.
“Foreigner has partnered with the Grammy Foundation. They have CDs that they sell and a portion goes to schools’ music programs. They are going to give us $500 for helping with the sales of CDs through this Grammy Foundation,” she said.
The Grammy Foundation is an effort to help keep music education alive in high schools all across the country. The band has donated thousands of dollars to individual schools and to the Grammy Foundation.
“We have a good music program,” Griffin said.
Members of the choir sold two CDs for just $20; “Foreigner 4” re-mastered and “Foreigner 4 & More.” All monies from their sales will be donated to the Grammy Foundation to help fund the mission of music education in schools.
In addition, Foreigner donated a signed Les Paul guitar. The crowd received a raffle ticket with the purchase of the CDs. The winning number was announced from the stage at the end of the show.
The Spencerville High School Choir qualified for state again this year. This is the 20th year the choir has qualified for state.
Auglaize Historical Society schedules bus trip
WAPAKONETA — The Auglaize County Historical Society invites the public along for a spring bus trip to Indianapolis on April 30. The price for the trip is $90 for historical society members and $100 for nonmembers.
The itinerary includes stops at the Indiana Heritage Center of the Indianapolis Historical Society, a driving tour of the city’s landmarks, with lunch at The Iron Skillet, a stop at the Indiana Medical History Museum, a trip to Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site and concludes with a trip to Wyliepalooza, an independent ice cream shop.
For those interested in participating in the trip, contact the Historical Society at 419-738-9328 or [email protected] for a registration form.
Univ. of Wisconsin students helped Lima nonprofits
MADISON, Wis. — Lima hosted 40 University of Wisconsin students who helped at local nonprofits Saturday.
These students are part of the nonprofit organization Students Today Leaders Forever. The mission of this organization is revealing leadership through service, relationships and action.
“The spring break tour is doing a city a day,” said Zach White, Bus Core member. “We like to visit big and small cities. Lima is just one that popped up on the map,” he said.
The students arrived in the morning and left that afternoon.
The students visited Teens for Christ where they helped make food that the high school students delivered to the homeless. At the Red Cross, they helped organize and clean the building; at the food bank, they packed up food for the Weekend Backpack program; they painted and cleaned the facility at the Salvation Army and organized and cleaned the ReStore store at Habitat for Humanity.
The students then had lunch courtesy of Kewpee.
According to White, this is the 10th year that the University of Wisconsin students have taken tours to various cities to donate time on spring break.
