PORT ANGELES — Singers from Port Angeles High School used to come to the Tudor Inn, Betsy Reed Schultz’s bed-and-breakfast, to provide music for her open house gatherings.
“The choirs were just fantastic,” Schultz remembered. “They would sing on the stairs, and then they would come down and mingle.”
The young singers, she added, were musically gifted as well as generous.
She’s reminded of this now as all four Port Angeles High School choirs converge for a public concert at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, 301 E. Lopez Ave., on Tuesday night.
Music including “Missa Kenya” and “The Ballad of the Green Beret” will fill the church as Men’s, Women’s, Symphonic and Vocal Unlimited choirs offer a benefit concert for Captain Joseph House of Port Angeles.
Admission will be by donation.
Captain Joseph House is to be the new incarnation of the Tudor Inn, as Schultz converts it into a different kind of haven: a retreat for the families of fallen military service members.
It is named for Schultz’s son, Army Capt. Joseph Schultz, who was killed in action in Afghanistan on May 29, 2011.
Pay it forward
Jolene Dalton Gailey, choral director at Port Angeles High, recently got in touch with Schultz to tell her that the choirs had finished their concert season but wanted to do something for their community, “something to pay it forward,” Schultz said.
On Tuesday at 7:30 p.m., 125 students will step up to sing the Navy Hymn, the Kenyan Mass by Paul Basler and Barry Sadler and Robin Moore’s 1966 “Ballad of the Green Beret.”
The Mass is a thrilling piece, “very rhythmic and powerful,” Gailey said.
Pianist Cole Urnes, percussionists Beth Ann Brackett and John Doster, and French horn player Douglas M. Gailey will accompany the singers.
Port Angeles High’s singers are a much-honored group: They sang at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City in 2011 and took three first-place awards at that city’s International Heritage Music Festival, while Vocal Unlimited has won first place at Idaho’s Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival twice in the past 10 years.
For Tuesday night, Gailey has done a special arrangement of “The Ballad of the Green Beret” in honor of Capt. Schultz, who was a Green Beret.
The song is a moving one, Betsy Reed Schultz said, remembering Sadler’s words:
‘Win the Green Beret’
“Put silver wings on my son’s chest/Make him one of America’s best/He’ll be a man they’ll test one day/Have him win the Green Beret.”
This concert is for all soldiers and their families, Schultz said.
She hopes to have Captain Joseph House renovated and ready to open May 29, the second anniversary of her son’s death.
By this performance, she added, “I am very honored.”
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
