A Day at the Races–Just Ducky
The life-sized yellow duck led the crowd of excited families in the countdown–Five-Four-Three-Two-One! Hundreds of plastic toy ducks were released into the flow of the lazy river at La Mirada’s SPLASH! Waterpark in the annual Duck Race for various charity organizations in town. Each duck represented a $5 donation to the charity of choice. Mary Dilena was the winner of the Grand Prize–$2,500. Congratulations!
Former symphony association president, Pat Ruiz and I, manned the LMS table, talking up the upcoming POPS concerts and gathering entries for a free ticket giveaway. La Mirada residents are a friendly bunch and we enjoyed chatting all morning. The highlight for me was meeting a sixth grader girl and her dad.
She asked, “Will there be violins? I’m taking violin lessons.”
Oh yes, we said, plenty of violins. Come, come to the concert. How long have you been taking lessons, etc. It turned she has only been taking lessons a few months–since attending one of our La Mirada Youth Concerts last fall. In October the Norwalk/La Mirada School District partnered with LMS to bus in nearly 2,000 elementary school children to hear symphonic music.
From that experience one girl (that we know of) was inspired to begin taking violin lessons. Her father told us she loved the violin and she’s hoping to continue her musical education as she enters middle school.
There’s a lot of work that goes into the concerts. Is it worth it? For me, watching the sixth grader and her dad heading down the sidewalk clutching our flyers made the answer–Yes–all the efforts are worth “keeping the music alive.”
See you at the POPS on Saturday–
Dana Taylor
President, La Mirada Symphony Association