1966: a young associate professor - the first professor of music at WPI - arrived to make sense out of chaos. General Harry Storke, President of WPI, found the musical organizations dying in front of him, and decided something had to be done. The task was nigh-impossible; yet, there was a good spirit among the undergraduates. This was the time of Vietnam, and all the undergraduates in the first two years had compulsory ROTC. The band was a ragged group of individuals, but the military band was very strong, for obvious reasons. If you played an instrument, the band company was the best life. The Glee Club had come down to thirteen members. There was a grand piano in Alden Hall with three bottles of beer (quite empty) inside the piano. There were piles of music covered in dirt in the Tower of Alden Hall, some music stands, and wooden choral risers. That was it. There was no rehearsal space - everything was rehearsed on the stage of Alden. Chaos!

The glee club had a fine president: Roger Doherty (called "The Dodger"), who was in Sigma Epsilon and was on the football team. The first thing that had to be done was to organize everything, and Roger was good at it. The first concert was Christmas with Becker College. That year's schedule included colleges with which the club had sung in the past: the Elms in Springfield, and Leslie in Cambridge. The club went from thirteen people to forty-six in one year. The fraternities found a new outlet to meet women. The administration didn't know what happened to it.

As the club got stronger and began to mingle with other colleges, such as Clark then Holy Cross, the then-dean of students, called Chrome Dome (for obvious reasons), thought he had to manage everything. Of course, he got in the way. But the club prospered and included many of the instrumentalists. The first big main event was with a club of sixty-two, when they went to sing with the Worcester Chorus in a performance of the Sacred Service of Ernst Bloch in the then-concert hall Memorial Auditorium. The orchestra was the famed orchestra of Detroit, under Sexton Earling. The composition was in Hebrew, with which the men struggled; the Worcester chorus master suggested "very strongly" that they not sing two of the movements, as the Hebrew was excremental. During the performance, they completely ignored this polite suggestion, and sang the whole thing - much to my delight, and that of President Storke, who could be seen to beam with pride.

With the advent of a new president, the desire of the club to travel became a difficulty. The first tour was to Washington. We had to go through hoops to get permission to do this. We were the guests of Senator Brooke, one of the two Massachusetts senators of the time, but it fell on the unfortunate weekend that Martin Luther King was murdered. We were warned as we drove into Washington that the city might not be safe for us, but we were due to sing the same evening a service of Eveningsong in the National Cathedral on St. Alban's Heights. During the service, we could hear sirens - many sirens - going past the cathedral. As we left by the south transcept, there was Washington in front of us, covered in smoke and bits and pieces of flame. The clergy had told us to go around parts of Washington on the way to the hotel, as it was dangerous. The hotel itself, on New York Avenue, was a garden tanks. That evening, being confined to quarters, we gave an impromptu concert for the residents of the hotel. Not all the tours have been as exciting as this.

The next year saw our scope of women's colleges expand to include Regis and, eventually, Wellesley. The club had decided that a European trip would be in order and, as I breached the subject to President Hazzard, he did not look favorably upon it. He suggested that we go on a Midwest tour, to recruit students for WPI. That was a disappointment for the club, so I asked him to come and speak to the club himself, which he did. We went on that tour by bus, and began with a concert at Case Institute (it was not Case Western at that point), followed by a reception put on by the alumni. The music of the Case Glee Club had fallen into disarray, but their men hosted the club well. The bus trips were tolerable only by being able to sleep. One thin tenor took up residence with a pillow in the luggage rack; we often forgot him there.

The next year, President Hazzard agreed, reluctantly, to "allow" us to go on a tour to England. "Why do you want to go to England? Why don't you go down and sing in a fraternity?" That did not meet with great favor from the men, and to England we went. England, at that time, had a disastrous strike of the postal workers, which took in electric, telephone, telegraph, and all communications. I received a phone call from President Hazzard's office two weeks before we were to leave. His secretary said, "There is a call for you from the British Embassy in Washington." So I said, "Fine, put it through." A pleasant British voice said, "We have received a note from the dean of Worcester, England, inquiring if you are still coming to England." (the diplomatic pouch seemed to be the only way to get a message out of England) I replied, in an equally pleasant voice, "Make to the dean of Worcester, 'Yes, we will arrive.'"

We took the brass choir with us. A new professor of chemistry, Dr. Thomas Edwards, went as official chaperone, lest the men drink too much. As we got off the plane at the old Heathrow, John Manasian, president of the Club at that time, asked where the buses were to Oxford, as we were staying at Wadham College. I said, "How do I know? I just got off the same plane you did! But, we'll ask these two bobbies at the end of the escalator." When we got up to the seven-foot British cops, I said, in my best English accent, "I say, can you tell us where the coaches are to Oxford?" They mumbled, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, they're over theare." As we left, Manasian said, "How come you speak American to me, and British to them?" He survived the accent.

We went with all the regalia of the college: flags, mace, and all the pomp. Concerts were at Oxford, Worcester Cathedral, Suffolk Cathedral in London, and in London House. In Worcester, when we got off the bus, we were met by the dean and the choirmaster, who promptly said, "But where are the women?" To which I replied: "There aren't any!" We went into rehearsal because we were singing the Palm Sunday High Mass in the Cathedral. They didn't know if we could sing or not; they had never heard us; they just took my word for it. In a loud section of the Josquin Mass, the dean and organist looked at each other and nodded - we would do. The organist asked us if we would partake in the reading of the Gospel as being part of the crowd in the Crucifixion, so he handed us a pamphlet. I said, "Let's try it out." We got to the line "Who would you rather have? This man called Barrabbas," etc. The answer was to be, "Give us Barrabbas." The men said it very nicely. "No, no, that won't do," I said. "More energy!" We did it again. The line came, and the men made more sound on their answer. "No, no, that still won't do! I want to hear it like you're on the football field!" The third time rang throughout the cathedral. During the Mass of the next day, we got to the line and Ralph Desmond grabbed hold of the choir stall in front of him along with the rest of the men and let fly with "Give us Barrabbas!" I think they're still hearing it in that medieval cathedral.

The bells! Those damned bells! We were asked by the dean to play a fanfare with the brass choir on the green for the opening of a sponsored walk for the cathedral. The Minister of the Interior was there to open it. I suggested, however, that we climb to the flat tower, which was the tallest structure in Worcester and play tower music. He thought that was a splendid idea, and so, an hour before service, we started climbing the medieval stairs inside the walls. I was last in line. As I passed the bell chamber, the peal of eight bells was ringing (a peal is when the bells completely swing in a full circle). Further up the stairs, I met an undergraduate headed down. He said, "Is this tower rocking?" I replied, "No, it's oscillating." It oscillated about five inches - enough to make one seasick. Because I had a baton in my hand and threatened to use it in an indelicate place on his person if he didn't go back up, we got to the roof. There, eight seasick brass players were clinging to the parapets. I felt queasy myself, and said, "I'll go down and tell them to stop." When I got to the bell chamber, I had a chat with the master bell ringer, who said, "Oh yas, we're going to stoppe in just a few. We know you're here." So I went back up. Sure enough, they stopped, and we got ready to play. After the first intrada was over, we stopped to turn the pages, at which point the bells started again. As a chorus, all nine of us shouted, "Oh, shit! There go those damned bells again!" I'm sure that people in Worcester wondered where that shout came from. The service went very well, and as the brass played the opening fanfare and processional, the dean leaned over to me and said, "The Royal Fanfare Trumpets were here last Sunday, but I didn't want to tell your brass players, lest they feel intimidated." They weren't. You have to have chutzpah to play brass.

On the way back from Worcester to London, the men and I agreed that the tour was a good idea, and we decided to go to California next year. Little did I know that this decision would affect us for the next twenty years.