young@heart

The content of the movie young@heart is matching experiences happening here in Hamilton, New Zealand. The Hilda Ross Glee Club has been active now for two years, not the 15 years that the Young@heart group had been functioning. But in that time the Glee Club has performed for their peers, and for outside audiences on average of 4 times a year. In 2007 they were guest performers at the Gerontology Conference in Hamilton, and were featured on National Radio. This group is formed from the people who occupy the villas at this Ryman Healthcare facility.

I also work with the Resthome Singers at the same facility, and the joy that they show in their singing is heartwarming.

Tomorrow I go to speak at the Auckland branch of the New Zealand Association of Gerontology's annual meeting, and my topic is my Hilda Ross groups. To flesh out this presentation, I asked my Glee Club members last week to tell me the benefits they found in singing in the Glee Club, and in the process found out so much more of their back-stories:

* Harry sang as a child, then spent 3 years in a prisoner of war camp and didn't sing afterwards. He moved, with his wife, to New Zealand, and never sang in church. Now he can sing higher than before, and his wife reports that he sings in church now!
* Wally stopped singing 20 years ago when his wife of 48 yrs died. he has just turned 90 and he thinks that he sings better than ever now
* Keith has always been interested in music and being involved in the Glee Club has broadened his knowledge about music and has improved his singing.
* Cecilia has Parkinson's disease which has affected her voice, and the singing has helped her control those effects.
* Pauline has found that her lung capacity has improved greatly after losing part of a lung, and she has a wonderful uplifted joyful feeling at the end of our practices.
* Ngaire takes Glee Club as her time out. She has a husband with multiple sclerosis, and she enjoys this time and thoroughly enjoys singing.
* Betty finds the rehearsals are wonderful therapy, 'fantastic, it just does something for you, you feel a bit blue and you start singing and it's wonderful'.
* Elizabeth has a chronic lung complaint, and it is really a joy to sing and it improves her breathing.
* Tui has had her enjoyment of singing renewed, and she leaves the rehearsal feeling like she has had a tonic.

For my first post I will leave you with their voices.