Hearts beating in harmony

This is the second in a three part series about four local Girl Scouts who have recently earned the Gold Award, the Girl Scout organization’s highest award. Last week Kelly Randolph’s project, a weather day, was featured. It was incorrectly stated that Amy Vassey advised Randolph through her project. Tamara Herrmann was Randolph’s project advisor, and Ellen Lassiter is her troop leader.

According to the Girl Scouts of America’s website, “The Gold Award project is the culmination of all the work a girl puts into ‘going for the Gold.’ It is something that a girl can be passionate about - in thought, deed, and action. The project is something that fulfills a need within a girl's community (whether local or global), creates change, and hopefully, is something that becomes ongoing. The project is more than a good service project - it encompasses organizational, leadership, and networking skills.”

Girl Scouts must go through a set seven step process in order to achieve Girl Scout’s highest honor, and last year approximately 5.4 percent (about 5,500) of all eligible, registered Girl Scouts in grades 10-12 earn their Gold Award.

Cherise Quamme is a 16 year old junior at McIntosh High School. The daughter of Ralph and Karen Quamme of Peachtree City, Ga., Cherise Quamme has been a Girl Scout for eight years, and is a member of Girl Scout Troop 417, led by Amy Vassey. An accomplished musician, Quamme is a member of the McIntosh High School Marching Band, a concert flute choir and a brass band (both based out of her church, Christ Our Shepherd Lutheran Church).

Quamme’s primary instrument is the baritone horn which she picked up in the fifth-grade. In eighth-grade she picked up the flute and began gaining interest in other instruments, and by ninth-grade, she was learning the piano. Quamme also plays the tuba and hand bells.

Quamme first began considering her Gold Award project once marching band season was over last year. “I was sitting with my mom at dinner. Marching band was over and I decided to start thinking about the Gold Award,” Quamme remembers. She realized that her best idea was to organize a concert. Her initial project proposal had a fund raising concert in mind, and she proposed her idea to the council three weeks after settling on the premise.

“There was a special provision that year for raising funds for victims of Hurricane Katrina,” she explains. Council, however, felt that the project needed to be expanded to include a focus on Quamme’s local community as well.

“I want to be an elementary school teacher,” Quamme states with certainty. It follows, then, that the talented teen would combine her love of musical instruments and her desire to teach when faced with revising her original project proposal. What resulted was a concert that would both benefit the Pascagoula High School Band, which was affected by Hurricane Katrina, but would also teach elementary aged students about the world of musical instruments. Her new, expanded idea was approved by council and Quamme immediately got to work planning the event.

The concert was set for May 13, 2006, in large part because it was the day both Quamme and the McIntosh High School auditorium were available.

Quamme’s next hurdle was to name her event. “It took a lot of brainstorming to get the name,” Quamme recalls. She finally settled on “Hearts Beat in Harmony.”

“I had to figure out who I wanted to play, and get them to accept,” she recalls.

A problem that rose immediately was the timing of the event, “A lot of people were pretty receptive, but there were a lot of conflicts with scheduling.” For some musicians, the event date was too soon, and they were already booked, others had to decline because the event fell on Mother’s Day weekend.

“I was lucky my church is so musical,” states Quamme. Several of the concert’s performances were provided by groups and musicians from Quamme’s church, including The Moravian Trombone Quartet and The Christ Our Shepherd Flute Choir, of which Quamme is a member.

Quamme logged dozens of hours planning the event, and says she received a lot of help from her parents as well as the McIntosh band director, Barbara Baker, who she met with weekly. Baker helped her secure the use of the school’s auditorium free of charge, since Quamme was both a student at the school and involved in the band.

In preparation for the event, Quamme contacted the Fayette County Board of Education to receive approval to send flyers to all the local elementary schools advising them of the event. She also went all over town, asking local businesses to place her flyers in their stores.

The concert, which lasted just over an hour, was a free event, open to the public. Quamme marketed the event toward families with elementary aged children and hoped for people to show up. “I hoped for about 60 people, but I was really just ‘whoever comes, comes,’” she says.

The evening of May 13 approximately 80 people came to the event, which beyond the concert also featured clowns (members of her church) and a scavenger hunt for the children in attendance. The scavenger hunt took place after the concert, and children were asked to find the answers to a list of music-related questions by asking the musicians and directors they had just seen perform.

Although the event was free to attend, Quamme asked attendees to make donations either financially or in the form of band instruments to go to Pascagoula High. Nine instruments and $550 were donated that night. Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, which exists to help its members achieve financial security and give back to their congregations, institutions and the broader community, donated an additional $500 to the fund raiser.

Quamme hopes to major in elementary school education, possibly at Samford University, and is looking for music scholarships.

This is the second in a three part series on the four Gold Award achievers. Keep your eye on The Citizen to find out about Fayette residents Evelyn Larson and Sarah Mudrinich’s Gold Award projects.

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