Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 30, 1994 TAG: 9402030002
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The year on the program is 1946. The setting was the Academy of Music in Roanoke, a concert hall that was razed by the wrecking ball 40 years ago.
The songs were mostly spirituals: "Blow Gabriel," "In That Great Gettin' Up Morning" and "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing." Performed by a group of men who in their day were proud representatives of their community, their city and the railroad where they labored.
Together, they were the Norfolk & Western Male Chorus. Individually, they are listed on Bob Macklin's program.
Next to most of their names, he has penned in the letter D. It stands for deceased.
Their faces also stare out at him from a few stark black-and-white photographs. Men in the prime of life dressed in tuxedos. Good men, Macklin says. Co-workers and friends.
Macklin, 76, has trouble now focusing on the faces and on the Ds next to their names. His eyesight isn't what it once was, either.
"One by one," he says sadly, "they have passed away."
The few who remain never get together anymore. Their ages make it too difficult to get around. And the group stopped singing together more than two decades ago.
But there was a time.
There was a time when they sang together every week, when they were well-known musical ambassadors who once numbered 40 people, traveled in their own railroad car and subtly broke racial barriers up and down the old N&W line.
Yet there is little documentation about this chapter of Roanoke's past.
Macklin, who directed the chorus for many years, once had a written history of the group and other memorabilia, but most of it burned in a fire at his home a few years back.
Norfolk Southern found some stories about the group that were published in the N&W magazine, but the stories offered little detail about the group's travels.
Virginia Tech, which handles the railroad's archives, found nothing on the chorus.
Only through its few surviving members does a more complete picture emerge, through their fond memories and the few photographs they keep as mementos.
The chorus was formed in 1935.
A black worker in the Roanoke Shops named Harold Williams went to his supervisors that year and proposed that the company sponsor a singing group of black railroad workers. He pointed out that the railroad was sponsoring a band for white workers, but had nothing for black employees.
The railroad agreed to the idea, and Williams became the group's first director.
They were provided with tuxedos that had the N&W emblem stitched onto the left sleeve. Most of the men worked as laborers in the shops. Macklin was a helper in the East End blacksmith shop and worked for the railroad 31 years.
He says the chorus was open to any black worker who wanted to join. There was no extra pay involved, other than a free meal occasionally when the group performed out of town. And he says there was nothing like it in Roanoke at the time.
Several churches had large choirs, but none had such a sizable all-male chorus.
"It was a novelty," Macklin says.
The group sang mostly religious music and often performed at churches, both for white congregations and black. For the railroad, the group performed regularly at company meetings at the Hotel Roanoke and elsewhere.
They traveled to Norfolk and played in West Virginia and North Carolina and were known across Virginia. They performed at Hampton Institute and Virginia State University and other colleges. They performed at the opening of Roanoke's Victory Stadium and on local radio.
The railroad provided a passenger car for the chorus when the men traveled out of town.
Raymond Hale, 82, another of the last half-dozen remaining members of the group, recalls how the chorus would sing on the car as it rolled along the tracks. Often, he says the train's conductor would prod them. "He'd come back and say, `You all get warmed up in here.'"
Hale worked for the railroad 39 years. He says he joined the chorus for the fellowshipping.
"In fact, I didn't know I could sing," he says. He also liked the group's tuxedos, which were a marked change from the uniform of a worker. "We thought we were something else."
He reflects a moment. "And I guess we were. Everybody all along the railroad knew about the male chorus. They loved to hear us. We were recognized as being a good, Christian group of men."
Indeed. J.P. Holland, 88, who managed the chorus for many years, remembers a stop in Rural Retreat when someone there remarked, "These fellows are officials of the railroad." A wide grin comes across Holland's face at the memory.
Holland went to work for N&W in 1924 and worked 47 years.
In small ways, he says the chorus pushed at racial barriers. Once, he says, a restaurant owner refused to serve the chorus, but relented when a railroad official intervened. And for a time, the group, when it played at the Hotel Roanoke, had to enter the hotel through the kitchen. Again, the company stepped in.
"After that, we walked in through the front door," Holland says.
But fighting racism wasn't the group's purpose.
The group's purpose was much simpler, Macklin says.
"It was just a bunch of men who loved to sing."
Their crowning moments came on stage when they lifted their voices together in harmony. Those moments continued into the 1950s and '60s, although the chorus grew less active as its older members retired and its ranks dwindled.
By the end, only a dozen or so of the men would gather occasionally in Macklin's basement to reminisce and sing just for the joy of singing. About 20 years ago, they stopped even doing that.
But there was a time.
Like the others, Holland is proud that anyone is still interested in the chorus.
That same wide grin lights up on his face.
"We had some wonderful times, I'm telling you the truth."
Keywords:
PROFILE
by CNB