Dear fellow choral singers,

As you may know, Roger Garrett, a close friend of Ben Keller, has assiduously been posting precious music from our choir days with Dr. Skones.

Ben was bequeathed years of concert tapes by their original audio technician—Allen Giles. After Ben passed away in 2024, approximately 150 large master tapes were willed to one of his former students who, in turn, gifted them to Roger. We are fortunate that Roger shared with Ben a love of fine old recordings and the processes and equipment that enable one to work with old mediums like aged tape reels.

Roger, an Illinois resident who is an accomplished professional performer himself, has given freely of his time, expertise, and equipment to salvage these wonderful recordings of our music. He has put in countless hours so far running off the ancient recordings on his open reel decks and rehabbing them to the pristine condition you have been hearing in the form of digital files. He is committed to many more hours of work to complete this project.

After becoming so familiar with this music, Roger is hoping to come to Tacoma to be present during the activities surrounding the 100th anniversary reunion this fall. He has stated that, if he can find a way to make that trip happen, and if he can break from his Symphony schedule, he would enjoy meeting as many Skones' alums as he can, share in all of your memories and fun stories, and share these recordings with you.  

The three of us decided we would like to make this trip for Roger happen. As a big THANK YOU to Roger for his free, countless hours in making this music accessible once again via his postings, we set up this Go-Fund-Me (Travel Fund to Thank Roger for reserving Our Choir's Legacy) to provide for the cost of Roger’s trip expenses.

If enough people contribute $50 or more to the fund we can cover Roger’s trip expenses.

We are so grateful to Roger for freely sharing his expertise, equipment, and time! We are excited to have the opportunity to share our music with each other again!

Warm regards,

Vicki Contavespi

Dinah Lindberg Helgeson

Rachel Eidbo