Reflections of CMI 75th Reunion
CMI: Lasting friendships
Excerpts from the blog of Wendy Gorton Hill: Of Books and Boys
Sometimes, when you are young, you don't really grasp the enormity of opportunities which lie before you. You take everything in stride, because this is just how life is. You aren't keenly aware that life could, in fact, be different in any way.
Wendy Bonifield, Susan Wolf, Cairena Huttenga, Darla Haggerty and Michele Ranard
Laura Allen, Sonja Cox, Lisa Franklin and Beth Callahan
1984-Susan Wolf, Jody Stella, Michele Ranard, Melissa Reasoner
Wendy Hill, Denise VanderWall, Lisa Franklin, Michele Ranard, Sonja Cox, Jenny Herndon, Alex Cox, Erika Morris, Jody Stella
Jody Stella, Beth Callahan, Rhonda Velasquez, Michele Ranard, Lisa Franklin, Denise VanderWall, Christine Nitch
(back) Michele Ranard, Denise VanderWall, Wendy Hill, Rhonda Velasquez, Beth Callahan
(front) Laura Allen, Sonja Cox, Lisa Franklin
Making a 'C' for CMI - Melissa Reasoner, Michele Ranard, Jody Stella, Denise VanderWall
Susan Wolf, Cairena Huttenga, Michele Ranard
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I recently had a chance to look back on my youth and recognize the blessings and opportunities I took for granted. Sadly, those opportunities aren't available for me now. But, I did have a rare and wonderful weekend to plunge myself back into my youth and ponder anew God's gifts, especially music, friendship and spiritual support.
Music always has been vitally important to me. When we were kids and reached the age of seven, my father taught us how to play an instrument.
In August, with the blessing of my husband (who bravely kept our three boys at home) I traveled back to Camp Wonderland to attend the 75th Central Music Institute's Alumni Reunion. I attended CMI from 1979-84. As a teenager, CMI was the highlight of my year. As soon as it ended, I began counting down the days until CMI would come the following year.
Thus, I was thrilled to be able to enjoy a weekend getaway and relive memories of that fabulous music camp experience. Many of my Northern Illinois Youth Band friends (who had watched the event grow in its appeal through Facebook updates) were there as well.
What a blast from the past! We stayed up late reminiscing. We gals shared a cramped cabin with one bathroom and talked fashion (well, they talked fashion ... I listened and marveled) and old times, just like when we were 16. Of course, these conversations also were peppered with remarks about ailments and health challenges, children, marriage and jobs. We stood back, amazed at how each of our personalities has remained the same over these many years. We contemplated pranks to pull on the guys in the cabin next door, but in the end, were too exhausted to carry them out. We shared joys and trials and we wondered why we ever allowed a quarter of a century to go by without rekindling these fast friendships.
Just as nostalgic as friends made me, the music knocked the breath out of me as well. It felt amazing to hold the horn to my lips once again.
I don't know if I can articulate what it feels like to participate in a Salvation Army brass band. The music isn't just a catchy tune; it is music which has been written to honor God and to stir souls. It is, as John Richmond reminded us in choral rehearsal, a high calling to present music. Musicians fulfill a ministry of the priesthood. (Oh, if I could only recall his specific words!) When I sit in a band and play such music, it moves me beyond anything else I know. I have always felt that way, but I had forgotten. Now, the "what-ifs" and the "whys" of the course of my life, the paths which led away from The Salvation Army and away from those brass banding opportunities, flooded over me.
Finally, I was thrilled to partake of those old opportunities for spiritual support. My youth band friends readily offered spiritual support back in those days. Toward the end of the Sunday morning service, as people poured forward to the altar, the friend next to me grabbed my hand and held it tight. Soon, another friend approached and had a word with me.
For all of it-the music, the friendship and the spiritual support-I consider myself so fortunate to have been able to attend that CMI reunion. As women, we can pour our lives into meeting the needs of our families and forget that we are still those same girls of our youth and need friendships, passions and spiritual support.
CMI Summer Sisters
Music, Friendship and Faith Keep Us Close
by Michele Ranard
"A sister is a little bit of childhood that can never be lost."
-Marion C. Garretty
To the rest of the world we are middle-aged moms who once feathered our hair, wore leg warmers and attended music camp together in the 1980s. Indeed, our children routinely remind us we are "uncool." But at the 75th CMI Reunion we were dreamy-eyed, teenaged girlfriends again. Against a backdrop of Salvation Army brass band music, the friends who bonded summer after summer at Camp Wonderland were back-cool without a doubt.
We are old friends who know each other's hearts. We are summer sisters. Forever.
How has such sisterhood survived the test of time? It's a lovely Salvation Army miracle. Where friendship once bloomed at CMI, across the miles and despite lapses of correspondence it flourishes still.
Perhaps it is because we know each other as we always were-soulful and tender, with hearts moved by music and ruled by Christ. CMI sisters from the east to the west gathered again where they learned to play instruments more skillfully. Where they harmonized in the chorus. What a gift to play and sing side by side at CMI once again. To hear the wit and wisdom of Bandmaster Bill Himes. To be conducted by renowned guests James Curnow and John Richmond.
What pleasure to bunk in the cabin and feel immersed in the breezy days of summers past. What joy to share laughter and sisterly love in the sunny place where each year we deepened and matured.
Hanging out at the pop stand, the grown-up girlfriends reminisced of CMIs gone by-of theory tests, timbrels, visits to the weedy lakefront, starry nights, and dating the same rotation of boys (somehow without bickering). All of us recall bonding at nightly devotions where we sang "Alleluia" and shared God's Word. We remember feeling simply delirious with each other's laughter and company every night of camp.
For the summer sisters, sacred Sunday mornings at CMI could be a river of tears of regret, of redemption, of restoration. At an altar where once we brought confessions and covenants, we offered them again and felt the familiar healing of the Holy Spirit.
The girlfriends of summer who broke hearts and mended each other's every August were joyfully reunited at CMI's 75th birthday. What a gift to hear their stories and music and to feel the spirit of CMI still so alive in each beautiful heart.
The sisterhood lives on despite the storms we've weathered. Together, laughing, we are still 16 or 15 depending on our mood.
Many dry seasons passed without a sighting of the 1980s camp girls wishing under Wonderland stars. Years passed before our thirsty souls reconnected. But somehow, just like that, the drought ended.
I, for one, had no idea how much I missed the rain.
Let it pour, summer sisters.