SSMF Alumni Reunite

by Bailey Basham, Messenger Intern
When Wanda Everett was a young girl, her mother saved money throughout the year to send her to the Sewanee Music Center in the summer.
More than 45 years later, Everett returned to campus for the Sewanee Summer Music Festival Alumni Day. There, she reunited with four of her friends from her days on the Mountain. Though it has been many years, Sewanee has kept them all together.
Everett, piano; Anne Megan, oboe; Joan Whiteside, flute; Bill Arey, oboe and Kathy High, french horn, met each other during the early 1970s and their time in Sewanee for the music center. The fees to attend the camp were expensive, but each of their parents felt it would be a sacrifice worth making.
“We all talked about that over dinner at the reunion. All of our parents just felt like it was important, and it was,” said Everett. “My mother had read about it in the Chattanooga newspaper. She knew it was expensive, and my parents didn’t have lots of money, but my mother put money back all through the year so that I could go to Sewanee in the summer. It was a big sacrifice for them but life changing for me and the others.”
Each of the others found their way to Sewanee through music teachers with connections to the summer music center.
Arey took oboe lessons in Baton Rouge from a professor of music at the SSMC, and Whiteside’s flute teacher told her about the center the summer before her senior year in high school.
“I loved it, and I learned a lot about stage presence and performance. I loved everything about it— the beautiful setting, the great teachers, great conductors, all of it. And obviously, I met some great friends that I still keep up with,” said Whiteside.
High’s French horn teacher at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, also a professor of music at the center, encouraged her to make the trip to Sewanee.
“It was an amazing time musically with friends that you had a lot in common with. It was just something that bonds you with people,” said High.
The five friends last reunited about four years ago when Everett married her high school sweetheart in South Pittsburg, Tenn.
“We’ve all been together over the years for different things like each other’s weddings, our children’s weddings, graduations, babies being born, vacations, stuff like that,” said Everett. “When we get back together, it’s like time never passed. We just get to talking as fast as we can, catching up and asking questions about what’s going on with each other. We do love to talk about old times that we had together, but we talk about new music that we’ve learned, different styles of music and playing our instruments as well. We all have such a great foundation of appreciating excellence in music from Sewanee.”
Whiteside said that the five friends have even played at each other’s weddings over the years.
“That’s the first people we think of because we know we’re good musicians and we’re good friends and we’ll probably come to each other’s weddings anyway, so we may as well,” said Whiteside.
Arey said he never grows tired of returning to the Mountain to visit, but that nostalgia about their years at the SSMC was particularly infectious once they were all back together for alumni day.
“When you’re around someone that was on the Mountain when you were, it tends to heighten the sweetness of the memories,” said Arey.
Each of the friends credit Everett for keeping the group together over the years, but Sewanee itself has had a hand in helping maintain contact among the friends.
“It’s kind of amazing that we’ve stayed in contact. Wanda was my roommate the first year, and we became friends that first summer. We feel like that was a God thing,” said High. “It’s really amazing because we just see how our paths crossed and we really feel like it was something that God did in bringing us together as friends. Just seeing how our lives have changed, it’s one of those things where sometimes a couple years go by without us seeing each other, but these are lifelong friendships.”