Anonymous donor gives students a reason to sing

“… Land of all my dreams, land of joyful sooong.”

The words reverberated off the walls in the choir room at Garry Middle School, getting louder and higher in pitch with each note.

Suddenly, the piano stopped and music teacher Pat Gunning came off her stool, waving her arms in a way that said, “wait, wait.”

“If you don’t have a smile on your face when you are doing this, something’s wrong,” Gunning said to the girls on the risers in front of her. Gunning returned to behind the piano, arms up, ready to try it again.

“Just think about our gift,” the teacher said.

In an instant, dozens of eighth-grade girls wore silly grins, and the melody continued, better and more upbeat than before.

The “gift” had most everyone at the northeast Spokane school singing with joy after an anonymous person dropped off a $20,000 donation Monday to the school’s music programs.

And if that miracle wasn’t enough, the mystery donor also bought a new piano for the choir room – because the pads on the old upright were rubbed bare and it wouldn’t stay tuned – and agreed to purchase nearly $10,000 worth of instruments.

“It’s beyond amazing,” said Gunning, who has been teaching for 34 years.

At a school like Garry, where 75 percent of students come from low-income families that qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, the generous donation brings much needed equality, she said. It also comes at a time when shrinking budgets and a focus on academics at the state and federal levels has squeezed out funding for some supplementary programs.

“We often don’t have enough instruments to loan out and some families can’t afford to rent them or buy them,” said Principal Brenda Meenach.

Garry students in the band and orchestra don’t have uniforms or performance outfits. They often show up to concerts and parades mismatched.

Some choir students didn’t have robes and couldn’t attend festivals.

“Everybody else would be all dressed up, and we weren’t,” said orchestra student Celine Clark, 13. “Now we will. It makes us feel better.”

Fundraisers by parent groups and the Associated Student Body generally pay for things like uniforms.

“We just don’t generate the money here,” Gunning said.

The anonymous donation will pay to outfit 120 band students and 70 orchestra students with black dress pants and shoes, button-up shirts and bow ties. For the choir, 35 additional students will get robes.

“They always sound good, and we want them to be able to look like they sound,” said band teacher Susan Peters, adding that the new look will likely boost confidence.

The donor also plans to purchase additional instruments, so that no student will have to go without. The district only has a few instruments for loan.

“In the past we haven’t been able to have a full orchestra or a full band because we haven’t had some of the more expensive instruments,” for students to borrow, like basses and cellos, Meenach said.

One student uses a cello called “Junky,” on loan from nearby Rogers High School.

At the start of the school year, Gunning and band teacher Susan Peters created a “pie in the sky” wish list for Garry’s music classes and organized a rummage sale to earn money.

The uniforms were the top priority, Peters said. They hoped to raise enough to buy a few.

During the rummage sale, the anonymous donor wandered in off the street and asked Gunning what the sale was for. Gunning showed the donor the wish list, and on Monday the person called and asked if he or she – even the donor’s gender is a secret – could make a cash donation.

“I thought maybe $50 at the most,” Gunning said. “Any amount would have been wonderful.”

The donation that came shocked everyone.

“We were flabbergasted,” Peters said.

The donor asked to remain completely anonymous but did tell school officials about “some rough times when pennies needed to be rubbed together to make ends meet.”

“I think a lot of our kids can identify with that,” Peters said.

While the donor’s identity is still a secret, it hasn’t stopped the students from writing hundreds of thank-you notes made out to “Dear Anonymous” and “Our Generous Angel.”

Students are also brainstorming ways they can “pay it forward” themselves.

“To me it just says to them that they are important,” Gunning said. “That they have a right to be the best they can be at all times.”