Local Veteran’s Group Leader And Alameda Elks Member Raises $5,000 To Help Fund Trip; Band Teacher Joyed And Surprised At Covert Ops Award Ceremony
By Larry Freeman (Photos courtesy of Tina O’Grady)
Joe LoParo, a local Veteran’s organizations and Alameda Elks Club member, had what might be called a very important, classified document in hand when he entered the Band Room on the second story of Alameda High School on Friday April 5th.
LoParo and two other Veterans organization members unveiled their well-kept, secret surprise to the tune of $5,000 in checks, generated from several fund raisers Lo Paro instigated to help defray the substantial cost of The Alameda High School Music Program’s trip to perform at New York City Heritage Music Festival.
AHS Music Teacher Tyra Ingram Cable, head of the AHS Music Program was in the dark when she walked into her familiar home turf to find Lo Paro, American Legion (AL) Post 9 member, Larry Fukuba AL Post 647 member Sam Morriana, AHS Principal Robert Ithburn, AUSD School Superintendent Pasquale Scuderi, School Board President Jennifer Williams, AUSD Senior Manager Of Community Affairs Susan Davis and Mayor Marilyn Aschcraft milling about as student band members took their places.
Cable was under the impression that her band would be giving an honorary performance for their special visitors, part of Lo Paro’s ruse in collaboration with Ithburn and others involved in the plot.
What the event was really about came as a shock –the good kind in this case—to Cable and the students.
Lo Paro had “hoped for a total surprise to her and the students,” he said days ahead of the presentation, and it went exactly as hoped.
Information on the covert op was so tightly held that Tina O’Grady, Alameda High School Music Boosters President noted in an email that the “ downside of it being such a surprise on the down low is that we didn’t have anyone from the Boosters there to cover it!”
When called to the podium for the presentation, Cable ‘hugged me and thanked us very much,” said Lo Paro who has known her for years due to her work in providing concert music at The Veterans Memorial Building on Veterans Day.
This time, it was the two being in the room together at at an Alameda Elks bi-monthly Sunday morning breakfast where band members were hoping for fund raiser contributions “to fill the tip jar” according to Lo Paro. Participating students waited tables while other band members played soft music for the three hour event.
Little did the students or teacher know at the time that their service would be so handsomely rewarded.
What started as an Elks Club community support gathering became something even more after Lo Paro asked Cable what the tip funds were to be used for.
Cable told him about their upcoming New York trip which “costs a lot,” in the realm of $35,000 according to O’Grady, who is also the trip’s Chair/Organizer.
Lo Paro, former U.S. Marine, hatched a covert ops plan and swung into action.
With Cable’s words resonating, “I told the teacher how much we appreciated their concerts and that they volunteer to play for us on Veterans Day every year and would see what we Veterans could do,” said Lo Paro.
The former U.S. Marine and current Service Officer of Castro Valley’s American Legion (AL) Post 647 hatched a plan and swung into action.
“We started at a group donation event for $500 and ended up at $1500 after people committed more,” said Lo Paro.
He parlayed that momentum as Vice President of the local chapter of Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) and knowing “the competitive nature of the group’s lol. I put the challenge out to them, explaining once again what I knew and then we raised $1800,” said Lo Paro.
Mission not yet accomplished, he tapped the commander of Alameda’s AL Post 9, Greg Ownes, and the group ponied up another $1,700 to round up at $5,000.
“These are the things we should be doing,” said Lo Paro. “You emphasize the good and that helps make things like this happen.”
The Vet’s substantial sum will be used to help with what O’Grady said was their responsibility to “make it equitable” when it comes to students’ families abilities to pay what amounts to a $1,700 per student price tag for the trip, with each chaperone footing the bill on their own.
The AHS Music Boosters budget for the every two year trip and will be putting in $20,000 of their own funds to help with needs based “scholarship” funds that can range from about $500 per student to $1,000, according to O’Grady.
With that funding piece and this year’s added boost from local vets groups and the Alameda Elks, seventy nine AHS student musicians will jet cross country on April 11th to spend three nights at a Newark Hilton Hotel and then ride for about 50 minutes on two Charter Buses to the fancy digs of their performance venue, Riverside Church , situated on Broadway in Upper Manhattan.
Orchestrating such a trip involving nearly 90 people, including eight adult chaperones is no easy task, indicated O’Grady.
To assist with core logistics, World Strides Educational and Travel Experiences put together a 5 page Itinerary for the foray.
A set of instructions to the group’s heads gives a solid indication of the trip’s many moving parts –and accompanying stresses– involved with handling a group of 89 people, including 79 high school students.
Having landed at JFK International Airport at 7:00 a.m. after a redeye flight on Alaska Airlines from SFO, and after the always anxious, sometimes messy waits at the baggage carousel, “Course leaders will call bus dispatch for instructions on where to meet the buses outside of baggage claim. Course leaders will MEET group at baggage claim,” reads the travel document for the 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm time schedule.
Kids get their first road trip wake up call early Friday morning to be at the hotel’s buffet breakfast by 7 a.m. before departing to attend a master class from specialized music “clinicians” who will work with students in two sessions to fine tune their performances at Boulevard Carroll Entertainment Studios.
Capping the musical learning experience will be three different performances at Riverside Church, with The AHS String Orchestra taking stage at just after 10 a.m. on Saturday, followed by The AHS Symphonic Band and, after box lunch, The AHS Jazz Ensemble.
A Circle Line Harbor dinner cruise awaits the bunch that evening with students busing back to their hotel around 10:30.
The busy agenda will pull them out of the cotton early Sunday morning for a 7:30 breakfast call for a tour of Radio City Music Hall, a visit to MOMA, and an early evening to fill gullets in Little Italy to then take in The Empire State Building.
If the one of the lessons of the music world involves a lot of high energy performing, a packed and mobile itinerary and early morning rises to make the next gig, this trip will train students quite well as they, and the ten folks who don’t share the full on energy and recuperative power of teens, will check out Sunday morning at 5:00 a.m. to, if all goes according to plan be back at good old Alameda High School at 1:30 pm on Sunday morning.
The group will, of course, have missed that day’s Elks Club Breakfast Brunch.