Musical Celebration of ASA's Sesquicentennial-A Personal Account

Abstract

We had sung a program of songs and parodies at the Biometric Society's Eastern North American Region (ENAR) 1986 spring meeting in Atlanta, and at the 60th anniversary meeting of the Washington Statistical Society (WSS) in 1987, and it was suggested that we prepare a program for the ASA Sesquicentennial. We mentioned it to Executive Director Barbara Bailar, who, after conferring with President Janet Norwood, responded, Consider yourself volunteered. We should mention that we had reassured them via some credentials that we are professional (and semi-professional) singers. Dwight Brock is one of the 16 members of the Paul Hill Chorale soloists of Washington, D.C., a group that performs as Washington Singers, and he and Mary Brock and Treva Whitmore had performed in oratorios, cabaret musicals, and regional theater groups in light classical and musical comedy projects. Paul Minton had a good deal of amateur experience. Here, of course, we performed as amateurs, a contribution to the ASA Sesquicentennial celebration. Norwood and Bailar had planned a formal banquet with a distinguished speaker, and our would be appropriate as entertainment following the banquet. Dwight, Mary, and Paul had originally met in Dallas some years ago, when Paul was Chairman of the Department of Statistics at Southern Methodist University, and Dwight was a Ph.D. candidate. At the time, Dwight was a paid soloist at the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation, where Paul had sung in the boys' choir as a child. three recognized their mutual interest in serious music, and later continued their personal association after Dwight was employed by the National Center for Health Statistics in Bethesda (later becoming Chief of Biometry at the National Center on Aging), and Paul moved to Richmond, Virginia, as Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Virginia Commonwealth University (later Director of the Institute of Statistics, and since retired). Mary continued and expanded her music and worked as an accountant and in a professional society office in biology, as their two children grew up in the Gaithersburg, Maryland, area. Paul has commuted from Richmond regularly to join Dwight and Mary in many of their oratorio performances for a suburban Maryland church, where Dwight is a featured soloist, and Mary and Paul have also had solo assignments. Treva is also a member of this group, which performs large works of classical sacred music with a small orchestra and imported conductors of stature, and, at times, imported soloists from such areas as the Washington Opera. came about through Mike Kutner's desire to have entertainment after the traditional banquet. Mike was the Local Arrangements Chair, a key role in the spring meetings with a great deal of responsibility and autonomy. Bill Schucany had mentioned Dwight to Mike, and Dwight suggested that he and Mary should arrange a program with Paul. Mike arranged the entertainment at some risk, however, since there was not general agreement that professional societies should have entertainment. There were other acts besides ours, and Mike checked on the quality of each beforehand. We began planning for the show with the idea that we should first establish that we are singers. Thus, the first several numbers should be straight, from well-known Broadway shows or musical comedy songs. Mary would open the show with Art Is Calling Me, Paul would follow with Every Day Is Ladies' Day With Me, Dwight and Mary would do a medley from The Desert Song, with solos for each, and then the three would sing a trio from Kismet called Is My Beloved. After demonstrating that we were singers, we wanted to begin bringing in some parodies, using songs everyone would recognize. This turned out to be a difficult task. We began by reviewing the titles of such songs, brainstorming for anything that we could connect even remotely with statistics. Paul remembers throwing out some on the telephone, thinking they were not very good, but we set to work improving them. Paul had a principle of starting with our favorite songs, as more personally rewarding to ourselves. One of Paul's favorite songs is All Things Are, which begins You are . . .; this could be turned into ENAR .... This went over well, and was redone for the ASA meeting as: