Honor Choir USA from New Iberia Senior High School is going places, namely, Honolulu, Hawaii, thanks to the generosity of so many local people and businesses.

It’s great that we are all about helping people, particularly these young men and women, attain their goals, reap the reward for accomplishing a feat such as theirs. Honor Choir USA takes the “best of the best” high school and college singers and arranges trips for them to Honolulu, which include opportunities to sing with top vocalists and to work with elite vocal coaches and directors.

One of the highlights of the local quintet’s upcoming trip, scheduled for June 26 to July 2, is certain to be standing and singing aboard the USS Missouri anchored at Pearl Harbor. They also will tour the USS Missouri and visit the USS Arizona Memorial that commemorates the servicemen who died when that ship was destroyed during the Japanese surprise aerial attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, a ”date which will live in infamy,” as described by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

I have had the pleasure of meeting the Honor Choir USA members and hearing their beautiful voices at three of the many events they have graced with their talent. They are Tanner Thorne, 15; Connor Smith, 16; Sophie Broussard, 17; Maria Cruz, 17, and Laurielle Watkins, 17.

Michele Broussard, Sophie’s mother and Honor Choir USA treasurer, announced this past week that the choir’s fundraising efforts have reached $17,000, $4,000 short of their goal to get to Hawaii.

“They are working very hard. They are singing every weekend at events,” Michele Broussard said in Wednesday’s Daily Iberian. “It’s an honor to do things like sing for the Cancer Society and paint faces at Chez Hope.”

The upcoming trip is a dream-come-true for choir members.

Cruz, who wants to make a career in music, said earlier this year, “The trip would mean the world to me. I’m going to study vocal music education next year. I’ve been singing since I was 6, in the church choir. It’s my passion.”

Sophie Broussard said, “I had considered that going to state choir would be so great, but national choir is so much bigger. It’d be such a great experience to sing with a big choir that really knows what they’re doing.”

Obviously, the local singers know what they’re doing. The community is proud of their achievement, proud they will represent New Iberia, and it shows with every dollar raised.

DON SHOOPMAN

SENIOR NEWS EDITOR