One of the biggest surprises – and announcements – from Mayor Tom Henry’s State of the City address had little to do with city government at all.
FORT WAYNE – Mayor Tom Henry and the Allen County commissioners will welcome the award-winning Voices of Unity Youth Choir back to American soil in downtown Fort Wayne today.
A rally planned for noon at One Summit Square will include representatives of the Fort Wayne/Allen County Convention & Visitors Bureau, the Downtown Improvement District, Arts United, AEP and other choir supporters.
The choir arrived home just before 2 a.m. Thursday to a parking lot at IPFW filled with cheering parents and friends.
Dozens of choir members filed off buses into the muggy Indiana air, most groggy from flying from Shanghai to Tokyo to San Francisco to Cincinnati.
The bus ride had been subdued, 19-year-old choir member Nathan Jackson said.
But the choir members woke up quickly to greet the fans who helped them raise money for the trip and watched from afar as they shared their talents in China.
Of course, it would've been hard to sleep through the honking of car horns and deafening cheers.
"It's been so long, and we've worked so hard," Jackson said.
That hard work paid off at the World Choir Games in Shaoxing, China, where the choir won two gold medals Monday in the international competition in the categories Popular Choral Music and Gospel and Spiritual.
TiErika Hunt, 16, was greeted by her parents, grandmother, aunts, uncles and friends.
"It's very exciting, just overwhelming and heartwarming," she said, clutching one of the fresh flowers given to choir members.
"I'm so thankful to have all these people that are so proud of us."
For the choir, the road to China was long in more than geographic terms. An ambitious fundraising campaign for $400,000 raised enough money for 80 choir members and about two dozen musicians, chaperones and support staff to make the trip.
It was money well spent to the choir members and supporters who often used the term "life-changing" in describing the trip during Thurday's parking lot celebration.
J.B. Pressey is a former NAACP president and a longtime friend of Unity Performing Arts founder Marshall White.
Pressey, who said he spent time in Korea and Vietnam while in the military, made his third trip to Asia as a chaplain for the Unity Choir. He was most impressed by the similarities he saw between the Chinese students and American ones.
Choir members set up a classroom in one of their hotel rooms and invited a group of Chinese elementary school students to visit. Within minutes, they were drawing pictures together and exchanging names and e-mail addresses, he said.
"When I heard this call, I had something hit me in the belly that said, 'This is the time that we can do something great,' " he said.
The choir operates under the umbrella of the Unity Performing Arts Foundation, the brainchild and labor of love of White, and has members ranging in age from elementary school students to recent college graduates.
In the early-morning hours Thursday, a tired but exuberant White, who walked off the second bus hoisting the choir's trophy above his head, was already planning for the choir's next big thing – the next Choir Games.
"America, look out," he said. "2012."
