What would you say if someone told you that for approximately 90 minutes you would be in charge of—no, the driving force behind—approximately 100 children, all kindergarten through sixth-grade age?
If you’re like me, you’d display the classically frozen deer-in-the-headlights look or perhaps simply bolt for the nearest exit.
However, if your name is Karen Ann Crane, you would not only accomplish this feat with grace but you’d be positioned on the tipping edge toward magical.
I had the privilege of watching Karen in action recently at one of the weekly rehearsals for the 26th annual Patriotic Sing, one of Morgan Hill’s Freedom Fest activities held July 3 in the Britton Middle School gym.
Walking into the gymnasium where they were practicing, I was overcome with nostalgia. This gym is where we gathered with other parents long ago when our older daughter was entering junior high—an unfathomably baffling experience because you can’t conceive your children growing up so fast. And, a few short years later, this was where we saw both our girls graduate from ninth grade.
But the old gym was more than a place of memories when I walked through the doors that evening. A sizeable group of children were lifting their collective young voices in the glorious “America the Beautiful” while Karen, wearing a “Freedom Fest” red shirt, held them in the palm of her hand. I needed to go sit down for a moment to collect myself.
What makes Karen so engaging is the connection she has with each of the participating youngsters. Performing songs of our nation—both traditional and lesser-known—the youngsters are focused on their animated leader as she moves amongst the kids who are sometimes standing, sometimes sitting on the wooden floor of the Britton Middle School gymnasium.
Karen never loses eye contact with those kiddos. Occasionally she breaks away to take one or two of them by the hand, leading them to the front of the group for a few measures of a song. During the break, I ask her about this practice and, as I suspect, she spots the kids who are really going all out performing the song and pulls them to the front to help her lead by example. It’s one of the ways she makes every
child feel special.
And she knows those children well.
“I love your shirt, Sydney,” she interjects during a song or, bending down low helping a boy find the right song sheet, she is cognizant of what’s happening with every child every moment—and they know it.
Milling about the group are other kids; older ones, previously patriotic singers themselves who now assist by, among other things, taking pictures, writing down T-shirt orders, passing out song sheets and walking beside the float while the Patriotic Singers perform during the downtown Morgan Hill parade.
When the children burst forth with “God Bless America,” I could almost feel the woman so known for that song, Kate Smith, beaming down from above.
“Such a spirited rendition,” she would approve. The thought inevitably raises goose bumps.
“Great job, great job, great job!” Karen repeats to her kids between each verse, every pause of that magnificent old refrain.
Indisputably, there’s a love for the songs and the kids that comes naturally to Karen. She, like me, came from an era where patriotic songs were sung in school, and out of that tradition came a love for country and respect for the men and women who have served and sacrificed for the good of our nation.
Older veterans from the generation of our fathers and grandfathers—many in uniform—attend the Patriotic Sing each year.
“(It’s) an honor to shake their hands,” Karen says.
We are honored, too, by the work Karen Crane is doing, keeping patriotism alive in South Valley through the voices of its children.
