Saturday, May 02, 2009
John Hubbard Memorial Ensemble: 'Lift every voice and sing'
The choir started 35 years ago in Blanch Frierson's living room and is still going strong.
JORGE VALENCIA The Roanoke Times
Blanch Mae Frierson (right), who retired from directing the John Hubbard Memorial Ensemble for 35 years at Pilgrim Baptist Church, leads the group in its anniversary celebration on Sunday at the church.
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The John Hubbard Memorial Ensemble has come a long way, especially for a choir that started in a living room.
Last week, the Pilgrim Baptist Church ensemble celebrated two milestones. First, it is 35 years old.
And second, the founding member who offered her living room all those years ago, 76-year-old Blanch Mae Frierson, retired from a long career of playing church music and inadvertently mentoring a few dozen faithful followers at the church in Northwest Roanoke.
"I didn't think 35 years ago that I'd see this day," said Darnell Freeman, the group's founding president and one of many people at the church who call Frierson "mom."
Sunday, several dozen friends and former members of the choir convened at the church to hear the ensemble perform an opening hymn of "He's Worthy" and to hear a guest group, the Central Virginia Community Choral Ensemble, perform an upbeat set of almost two hours.
They were there to celebrate the day when Frierson began holding meetings in her living room of a choir that was named after her late father, who had served as musical director of the church.
At the time, Frierson served as pianist for the church's men's choir.
Choirs at Pilgrim Baptist had rigorous rehearsal attendance requirements, so people who couldn't commit started congregating whenever they could at Frierson's living room.
"We had a lot of people who could not make it to enough rehearsals with other choirs," she said recently. "So we organized the choir for people who couldn't make every rehearsal."
Since then, the group has grown from a handful to a dozen to more than 60 members, singing on the fourth Sunday of the month. Members have traveled along the East Coast, singing in towns from Florida to New York.
They have sold candy during Christmas and served chicken dinners on countless occasions to buy Bibles to donate.
Yet the longest-lasting legacy was Frierson's impact on members, some of whom traveled from out of state for her retirement.
Freeman, a retired chemical analyst from the Roanoke Cement Co., said that after his mother died in the 1980s, Frierson filled that role. His eyes welled with tears when he talked about her:
"Mae has been there for me through some rough times. I've always been able to talk to her."
Frierson organized Bible studies for the choir at least once a month, and assigned each member a different Scripture so he or she could lead the group. People around church, including the pastor, started quoting her signature saying: "Only what you do for Christ will last."
Frierson's daughter, Sandra Hughes, said that over the years she saw her mother mentoring many people in their faith.
"Since the choir started, she always put God's word first," said Hughes, who came from New Jersey for the event. "And not all members were confident when they joined the group, so her Bible studies was really a way of helping them become leaders."
Frierson said she was stepping down because of her physical frailty -- she has had two back surgeries recently, among other things. And yet, during the ensemble's opening hymn, she let go of her walker and directed the singers with her hands as she quickly paced from one foot to the other.
