Concert-ed effort produces reunion

What made the seed sprout was last year's performance at Proctor's Theatre in Schenectady by the Silvertones, a trio of retired men who re-create the music of the Mills Brothers.

Three months after their performance in 2000, the Silvertones' leader, Bill Coughtry, received a letter from a childhood schoolmate, Mary Ann Fitzgerald Lanni. They had attended St. Patrick's Elementary School in Watervliet in the 1940s. Although Mrs. Lanni had not seen the show, she'd read an article in The Evangelist about the performance.

Come again?

Although he had a notion that she might be attending the upcoming performance, he had no idea what else Mrs. Lanni had in mind. Reading the article spurred some great memories of their Catholic grade school days for Mrs. Lanni. The idea occurred to her to organize a reunion.

"I had been involved in a 50th high school reunion with a former classmate from St. Patrick's," Mrs. Lanni told The Evangelist. "After graduating from the grade school, that friend and I had gone on to the public high school with Bill. Other classmates went on to Catholic high schools in the area. The two of us had discussed the possibility of trying to get our classmates together from St. Patrick's for a grade school reunion. But we just couldn't make connections and didn't really know where people had gone to after graduating from St. Patrick's."

Links

"I decided that Bill was the 'hook,' the reason to have a reunion" she said. Using the Silvertones' performance as the theme of the reunion, she began making calls. This time, she made headway.

"We contacted every high school in the area, looking for a record of our grade school classmates," she said. "We have managed to contact all but eight of them!"

Song in heart

He waited until he retired and relocated to Florida to get a master's degree in music. According to the baritone, it was worth the wait.

"I always had 'a natural ear' for harmony but never could figure out how the Mills Brothers harmonized the way they did," he explained. After studying music, he knew the answers.

Eventually, he joined with friends to form the Silvertones. Before long, they were performing in southern Florida.

Getting together

"Several classmates have supplied class pictures from the fourth, fifth and eighth grades. We plan on duplicating them on the computer and passing them out to all that attend the reunion," she said. "We even found a photograph of the eighth grade choir -- and there's Bill, right in the middle! This will be the first time that many of us have seen each other since we were classmates in 1944!"

As far as listening to the Mills Brothers music performed by the Silvertones, Mrs. Lanni expressed excitement. "There aren't many opportunities for people our age to be able to listen to 'our kind of music' performed live," she said. "I am very much looking forward to it!"

"I can't believe I will be seeing many of the great people I spent my first eight years of school with," said Mr. Coughtry. "I am really looking forward to it."

(The reunion includes more than the Silvertones. Beforehand, the classmates will have a brunch, and dinner will follow. Students of the class of '44 from St. Patrick's School in Watervliet are invited to contact Mrs. Lanni at 456-6926 for information. Tickets for the concert by the Silvertones, Sept. 23 at 3 p.m., are available to anyone. See the advertisement on this page.)

(09-13-01) [[In-content Ad]]