Left to right: Opal, Junie, Winnie, and Pop.
One family. One handbell. A great deal of harmony.
Left to right: Opal, Junie, Winnie, and Pop.
The eldest, and the one who does the talking. Opal keeps the family scrapbooks, runs the merch cashbox, and believes deeply in eye contact and thank-you notes. If there's a reporter in the room, Opal will greet them at the door. Unshakably composed, the anchor the harmonies hang from.
The middle daughter and the sweetest soul in three townships. Junie collects commemorative thimbles, she's past two hundred now, and cries at any national anthem, regardless of nation. She runs the bake-sale table and keeps the crabapple jelly in good supply. On spoons, she is a force.
The youngest, and the quiet engine of the whole operation. Winnie writes every word we sing, in a spiral notebook she won't let anyone read until rehearsal. Her songs are unconventional, about farm life, and forgiveness, and the plain truth of things. She does not explain them. She simply hands them to us, and we sing.
The father, the founder, and the reason any of this exists. Thirty-one years foreman of the grain elevator; still repairs pump organs for country churches on request. Wears the same denim his father wore and plays a four-generation soprano ukulele named Old Gladys. Says music is "just talking, only slower, with more feeling."
She first hummed the melodies that became our earliest songs. Every performance is dedicated to her.
Every note goes up to Marigold. ♡