Things were starting to look up for the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival- at least from a competition standpoint- as a new century arose. The contest was now firmly established as a Decatur, IL attraction, what with the perfect location (the newly-renamed Holiday Inn Select)...a venue where ragtime fans no longer had to worry about it raining on the parade.
What could go wrong?
We'll tell you later.
But first...let's talk about the 2000 version.
That year, 23 contestants weighed in (14 in the Regular Division, nine in the Junior Division); while eight JDs were trying to wrestle the division's crown away from the new kingpin, Adam Yarian, everybody in the RD group fought to get the newly-vacated title...left open because the then rules said that Brian Holland couldn't go after a fourth straight championship.
Two Reg Division contestants had never tasted the OTPP experience before: Barbara Curry and Michael Urban-Piette.
Meanwhile, John McElhaney ended a sixteen-year wait between berths in the contest (an event that underwent all sorts of changes since he last tried it in 1984...the biggest being the competition's move indoors in 1987).
One thing hadn't changed for Johnny Mac: He proved he was still RD semifinals material.
In the JD competition, Jerry Ailshie, Erin Long, and Ashley Leverenz were back to tussle with Adam Y. and Harrison Wade. But for 2000, they were joined by first-timers Will Best, Charles and Chris Korban, and the newest Danville (IL) discovery, Lauren Clayton.
When all was said and done, Harrison passed up Jerry (and Charles turned out to be the better Korban)...but Adam from Maryland was able to notch a third straight Junior Division championship.
Fourteen-year-old Adam did it...he punched his ticket into the contest's adult division.
Back in the adult-division wars, Mimi Blais was determined to leave no doubt that 2000 was her year...no questions asked.
The question was: "Who's gonna place second?"
At first, Michael Stalcup was running second...but he flamed out in the semifinals, and fell so far behind that Dan Mouyard, Marty Mincer, and Faye Ballard passed him up (with Faye taking second for herself at the end of the RD second round).
Well...if 2000 wasn't going to Mimi's year, would it be Faye's? (After all, when OTPP was still a one-division competition, Faye nearly ripped the crown away from Joybelle Squibb in 1976, the contest's second year.)
As it all turned out, Dan and the Two Martys (Mincer and Sammon) passed Faye up...but all four of 'em couldn't come out ahead of Mimi. (Marty S. placed second in the Regs.)
It all came down to dueling versions of "Kitten on the Keys:" Mimi's version was better than the rendition Marty M. brought home.
And no woman contestant has since snared the Regular Division's top prize.
Circumstances prevented Mimi from coming back to Decatur for the 2001 C&F...so that meant both division titles were there for the taking.
2001 was the year the Memorial Day weekend extravaganza boasted 24 contestants (sixteen RDs and eight JDs); seven pianists were new to the contest this time...and all but two were Regular Division performers.
David Feurzeig and Janet Bullock were two of 2001's first-timers; so were Al Roma (an American living in Germany at the time) and Andrew Barker (a Briton living in America back then).
Lauren's piano teacher, Bev Wolf, filled out an entry blank, too.
Bev was the instructor who also showed Ashley and Erin- as well as 1999 JD performer Marcie Hunt- the ropes.
Speaking of JD...it was a one-Korban year (Charles carried the family banner this time) and the first year Illinoisan Karah Gettleman and Iowan Sarah Davison (who grew up to become a Tennessean and help start a great band called High Road III) got in there.
I first met Sarah two years earlier, when I competed at the National Old-Time Country, Bluegrass, and Folk Music Festival and Contest (still held at that time in Avoca, IA). In 1999, the then sixteen-year-old grabbed that festival's ragtime piano championship...a title I'm told I almost won on my own first try.
Getting back to 2001...it looked as if Al was going to triumph on his first try. He boasted a four-point preliminary lead over David and the youngest of the RD performers, ol' Adam Y. But Adam Y. and Al R. lost ground in the division semifinals, and Dan went from a fourth-place tie with Faye to a second-place tie with Al...while David F. scooted to the top coming into the Reg finals.
OTPP Weekend 2001 turned out to have quite a few firsts:
*Harrison emerged victorious (his initial title) in the younger competition...in a year where the second-place and third-place JD finishers finally got awarded prize money, too.
*Sarah became the first female Junior Division contestant to receive prize money (she finished third while Will got second place).
*David couldn't hang on to the top Regular Division spot...and, instead,
Dan M. became the first OTPP contestant to follow up a JD title with a championship in the RDs. (Adam, Al, and Faye rounded out the RD Top Five.)
2001 was also the year Decatur's Holiday Inn Select went under new management.
This new management group decided to remodel the hotel...lobby, rooms, and all. And the danger was that the makeover wouldn't be done in time for 2002's Memorial Day weekend.
Plus, the group's members felt the Holiday Inn Select had room for just one big musical event per year. As a result, the new team decided to prop up the Central Illinois Jazz Festival and turn its back on the OTPP Contest.
The clincher came from the Decatur Convention and Visitors Bureau, a group that had been giving the Old-Time Music Preservation Association $2,000 per year to help with advertising the contest.
On the eve of the 2001 get-together, bureau officials told OMPA: "We're cutting you off!"
And so, for the first time in fifteen years, Ted Lemen and Co. needed a place for contestants to show their stuff on the 1883 Weber upright piano nicknamed "Moby Dink."
When we come back to take another look at the history of the OTPP soiree, we'll learn about the contest's next site.
I'm Jim Boston...thanks for reading this blog!
It's getting to be that time again...when ragtime musicians and their supporters gear up for the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival. And this year, the plot thickens.
The reason: After four decades of the event taking place in (as things turned out) four cities in Illinois (Monticello, Decatur, Peoria, and East Peoria), old-time piano's biggest competition (well, at least on American soil) begins a new chapter...on and around the campus of the University of Mississippi. This year's dates: 5-26/30-2016.
I won't get to go to Oxford, MS this time around. And the culprit is the cataract in my left eye. (It's going to have to be removed later this year or early in 2017, depending on when or if I'm able to receive a bonus from the plastics factory that currently employs me. And the eye-care clinic performing the surgery wants $1,500 up front- and the retina surgery I underwent on 12-14-2015 completely paid up- before an ophthalmologist can touch my left eyeball again.)
You bet I've got health insurance through my place of work.
It's just that, with its $1,500 deductible, the insurance is worthless when the staff at the eye clinic you trade with tells you: "We're going to have to shoot a laser into your eye."
Result: I've decided to retire from OTPP competition and focus on performing here in the Omaha/Council Bluffs/Bellevue area.
I came back to this area on 3-29-1997, and as a result, I couldn't make the trip to Decatur that Memorial Day weekend (hadn't racked enough vacation time at my then-new gig as a data storage technician for an infotech firm).
So...I made gearing up for OTPP '98 one of my goals.
The 1997 Decatur experience featured an eighteen-player field (fourteen in the Regular Division and four in the Junior Division) in which Brian Holland grabbed the Traveling Trophy for the first time...and Noah Harmon beat out Mindy Dunkle on technical points for the JD title.
The next year, Noah, Mindy, and their fellow 1997 JD competitors John Clark and Neil Blaze had to fight off seven new younger contestants: Kara Huber, Peter Segrist, Joe King, Katrina Kappes, Noah's younger brother Zack, and two names we'd hear from during the decade to come: An Illinoisan named Harrison Wade and a 12-year-old Marylander named Adam Yarian.
Meanwhile, the adult field saw a 50% increase in size over its 1997 counterpart. First of all, Patrick Kelly, Theresa Milhoan, Bruce Walker, a Tennessean named Michael Stalcup, and a Kentuckian by the name of Allen Dale (maybe you've seen Allen's YouTube offerings) entered the OTPP wars for the first time. And then Mimi Blais, Will Hahn, and I came back after a year's absence. (Gale Foehner, Arlene Stoller, and defending RD finalists Adam Downey and Steve Kummer were no-shows this time around.)
To top it all off, Floridian Dorothy Baldwin came back to C&F competition after a nine-year gulf...while Noah's and Zack's dad (and Linda's hubby) John ended an eleven-year sabbatical from going after the Big Loot.
Not since the Kaizers in the middle 1980s had a whole family tried to grab the top OTPP prizes. As it all shook out in '98 for the Harmons of Winneconne, WI, it was Mother and Oldest Son Know Best. (Noah lost his Junior Division crown...but he still outplayed Zack. What's more, Linda snared a place in the Reg Top Ten...leaving John behind.)
With Mimi back to perform her brand of sorcery on the contest piano ("Moby Dink," a Weber upright built in 1883), she and Brian made it a two-person RD race. And Theresa (a teacher from Illinois) initially looked like a Top Five pianist.
As Theresa flamed out in the Reg Division semifinals, Mimi broke a preliminary-round tie between herself and Brian to take a one-point semifinal lead...that evaporated when Brian aced his RD finals test, thanks to killer versions of "I've Found a New Baby" and "Handful of Keys." The Man from Indiana stood tallest again, while Mimi, Marty Mincer, John Skaggs, and Bill Edwards rounded out the division's money winners.
The biggest news in Decatur that May came in the JDs. Neil was hoping 1998 would be his year...but it actually was the year old-time piano fans found out about Adam Yarian's greatness.
A new force had emerged.
Instead of 32 pianists (the record-setting 1998 total; the old mark was 31 in 1984) duking it out, 25 showed up in the Holiday Inn Select's green room on 5-29-1999. Of the previous year's newcomers in the RDs, only Michael and Bruce came back for 1999 in their quest to prevent Brian from becoming the fourth pianist to get three straight Reg championships. In addition, only one newcomer enlisted in that division: Tom Cortese. And Marty Sammon (the JD champ in 1994 and 1995) made it into the ranks of the RDs this time around- his first contact with OTPP pressure in four years.
By contrast, the Danville Connection made its debut in the Junior Division bracket.
"The Danville What?" Well, a Danville, IL pianist and teacher named Bev Wolf started getting some of her students into OTPP; the first ones were 1999 combatants Ashley Leverenz, Erin Long, and Marcie Hunt.
Fellow Illinoisans Jerry Ailshie and Amanda Benoit joined Marcie, Ashley, and Erin as contest newcomers in the JDs for the last (or next-to-last, depending on your point of view) year of the 20th Century.
Jerry outpointed all the other newcomers (Tom included!), but it just wasn't enough to keep Adam Y. out of the driver's seat in the younger division.
Meanwhile, the 1999 Regular Division race was looking like the one from the year before...except that Mimi was clearly ahead of Brian during the first two rounds. (There'd be no stopping her this time, and she'd bring the $1,200 top prize back to Montreal, QC.)
"Oh, yeah?" said Brian.
With another nearly flawless final round (it included "Dallas Blues" and Scott Joplin's "New Era Rag"), Brian put his name next to those of Dorothy Herrold, Mark Haldorson, and Ron Trotta.
He closed out an era and became, at 27, the youngest three-time undefeated RD champ ever.
And so, the next question became: "With Brian Holland retiring unbeaten, who's gonna rule the Regular Division now?"
Stay with us and we'll find out.
Glad to be back!
Now that it's official that the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival will take place in a new location (Oxford, MS) and will continue to happen on Memorial Day weekend, it sounded like a great, great time to pick the contest's history back up.
Where we left off, it was 1994...and Mimi Blais came to the Holiday Inn Conference Hotel in Decatur, IL (the OTPP site since 1987) and tore the place up as she snared the Regular Division's Traveling Trophy and took it back home to Montreal, QC.
And it was a year where only five Regular Division contestants and just five Junior Division ones went after prize money.
When Mimi won it all in the RDs, that did it.
Put the brakes on the shrinking of the contestant field, that is.
When we met at Decatur's Holiday Inn in 1995, six Junior Division hopefuls and eighteen Reg Division contestants took to the stage...including four RDs who decided not to go after the Big Dough the year before (after competing in 1993) and six newcomers to the division.
In addition, three of the JDs had never competed in OTPP before. In that group, there were John Schultz and two names we'd hear from for a long time to come: Noah Harmon (a son of Linda and John) and Dan Mouyard.
Newcomers to the Regular Division were Teresa Arth, Clarence Maley, Mitchell Johnson, Rod Ludwig, Howie Wyeth (a descendant of Andrew), and John Yates. (John Y., from Bowmanville, ON, teamed up with Mimi to give the contest two Canadians that year.) What's more, Brian Holland, Marty Mincer, Faye Ballard, and "Perfessor" Bill Edwards got back into the mix after a two-year absence, Todd Robbins took up the call after staying away for seven years...and John H. ended an eight-year siesta from competition, while Linda moved out from behind the judges' table to climb back on stage, end a six-year hiatus from competing, and take on the contest piano, that 1883 Weber upright nicknamed "Moby Dink."
And the biggest news of all was...Julie McClarey, six years after winning it all in the RDs, jumped back in.
It was all because of the giant competitive shadow Mimi cast.
For the first two rounds of Reg competition, it looked as if Mimi was going to keep that trophy, in spite of Julie and Linda (and those two inseparables, Marty M. and "Perfessor" Bill) tagging after her.
Still, Julie's sets got stronger with each round...until her textbook technique (standing out in "Grandpa's Spell" and "Alabamy Bound") enabled the Mom from Decatur to snatch the Traveling Trophy away from the classically-trained Montrealer.
By three points.
Meanwhile, Marty Sammon (that's right, blues fans; that Marty Sammon) showed that he wasn't going to let go of the Junior Division crown...which, this time around, he won by eight points over Max Schiltz.
Just as Mimi heard Julie's footsteps in 1995, Julie heard footsteps herself the next year...a year in which seven pianists (all but one duking it out in the RDs) tried OTPP competition for the first time.
That meant new RD'ers Gale Foehner, Will Hahn, T.J. Thompson, Brad Pregeant, John Skaggs, and an Irishman named Desmond Crawford.
The lone new JD'er, Illinoisan Hillary Fedirka, joined Max from Missouri in trying to get the title Marty S. wasn't able to fight to keep in 1996 (circumstances kept him from making the trip from the Chicago suburbs to Decatur that Memorial Day weekend).
It was almost Max' year.
Instead, 1996 was Pennsylvania Dan's year.
By three points.
Over in the Regs, Brian went from knocking on the door to the division's Top Five to kicking it down. He and John Skaggs ended up replacing Bill E. and Marty M. as the two men in the Regular Division's money line...and Faye wound up taking Linda's place in the RD Top Five. (Linda, Marty M., and Bill E. didn't taste it up in 1996.)
Julie Mac heard footsteps, all right...but she still outplayed Brian and kept her place at the top of the Regular Division. Brian, meanwhile, passed up Mimi and relegated her to third place (with Faye and John Skaggs rounding out the quintet).
But the Man from Indiana served notice...and the next three OTPP Contests would belong to him. (Well, at least the adult competition would belong to him.)
I didn't get to see Brian Holland snag his first RD crown. I'd moved from Sioux City, IA back here to Omaha, NE on 3-29-1997...and I hadn't yet earned enough vacation time at my new job (with an information technology company) to make the trip back to Central Illinois.
By contrast, Noah did get to come back to Central Illinois...and he had to fight off three new JD contestants: Mindy Dunkle, Neil Blaze, and John Clark.
The only new adult contestants in 1997 were Steve Kummer and Arlene Stoller. Meanwhile, Aaron George came back...after sitting out the previous six contests. In all, fourteen older pianists joined the four younger ones.
Mindy caught Noah at the top of the Junior Division...but he prevented her from becoming the first girl to rule the JDs because of his better technical score.
Steve acquitted himself quite well, too.
All he did was finish second in the RDs to Brian...meaning he'd also passed up Bill E., Marty M., and Adam Downey.
Yep...the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival was beginning to hit its stride, not only in terms of competition, but also in terms of fan support.
In fact, things got to the point where the performer field would grow...wildly.
When we pick up the topic again, we'll see just how wildly.
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes continued to come to the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival as the 1980s gave way to the 1990s.
With the contest about to embark on its fourth year as a Decatur, IL event (its fourth year as an indoor attraction after twelve of them taking place outdoors in Monticello, IL), the Monticello Railway Museum decided to pull out.
With that, a new group was needed to put the C&F on...and so, in March 1990, the Old-Time Music Preservation Association (OMPA) was put together. Its purpose, besides overseeing the contest, was to promote the very first form of popular music to ever come out of these United States.
All you needed to become a member of OMPA (besides a love of old-time music) was, at first, an annual fee of $20. And, if you forked over that fee, you'd also get a newsletter called The Old Piano Roll News.
Two months after the organization began, its first major order of business was to ultimately hand six cash prizes (and two championship trophies) to the six most deserving of twenty 1990 OTPP hopefuls- fifteen Regular Division performers and five Junior Division contestants. (In those days, all the JD pianists competed for just one cash prize.)
The Junior Division field that year was almost a family affair (or Family Affair, if you will) thanks to the presence of Tom, Katie, and Carrie Drury...but they and Aaron George couldn't prevent the Dax Baumgartner Express from chugging to a third straight title (and a berth in the Regular Division the next year).
Speaking of Regular Division...two of the contestants came back to the festivities after a long stretch of time away: Bruce Petsche (he won it all in 1980) and Faye Ballard (she almost won it all in 1976...as a twelve-going-on-thirteen-year-old). Plus, as was the case in 1988, the Two Kellers (Sue and her mother Betty) were in search of the Traveling Trophy. Lillian Nelson, Marcy Fruchter, Fran Stowe, and Fletcher St. Cyr were first-time contestants, and they were after the Big Dough.
What's more, Neil Moe was trying to become the first Junior Division titleholder to snag a Regular Division championship.
"Perfessor" Bill Edwards, Marty Mincer, Therese Bradisse, Mark Lutton, and Lorraine Pantalena all came back.
Taslimah Bey didn't.
Paul Gronemeier didn't, either.
Neither did the reigning RD champion, Julie McClarey.
Her and husband Steve's family was growing...otherwise, Julie might've won the 1990 Reg crown.
That crown went to Marty, an apple farmer from Hamburg, IA...and he became the first Hawkeye Stater to bag OTPP's top prize, with Bill, Sue, Neil, and Betty also getting RD prize money. (And Marty won it all in his grandfather's band uniform.)
By the way...it's a great time to tell you that, if you're going to compete in OTPP, you've got to put on a costume. You've got to compete in something people generally wore during the 1880-1929 period.
This means that men contestants have generally worn period suits, tuxedos, and- more often than not- that familiar white shirt-vest-bow tie-slacks-arm garter combination (the outfit I like to call "bartender's duds"). Sometimes, the OTPP men have added hats to the outfits.
And another exception besides Marty's band uniform (that actually was his granddad's) was the overalls Dale Wells once competed in.
Women contestants usually have donned those long, long dresses from pioneer days or from the turn of the 20th Century...or they'd put on those flapper dresses (or gowns) from the 1920s.
And some OTPP women have worn the bartender's duds themselves...and Jennifer Booker once competed in overalls, while Taslimah went at it in a tuxedo.
In 1991, fifteen pianists total did their thing at Decatur's Holiday Inn Conference Hotel (the venue's then name)...and all but three were in the adult division. (Dax wasn't one of the RDs...and neither was Sue. And that made the '91 competition a one-Keller event, thanks to Betty's presence as a competitor.)
The JD field consisted of newcomers, two of whom we'd be hearing from for years to come. That year, Kris Becker finished third in the Junior Division, Marty Sammon (that's right, blues fans- THAT Marty Sammon) came out second best, and Adam Downey took Dax' place as the best JD ragtimer.
And Adam would go on to his own three-year run at the top of the younger division.
With Sue no longer competing (and, instead, getting ready to embark on a long run of serving OTPP in many other ways- especially as a contest judge), Dale slipped in as one of the 1991 RD finalists; in the process, he joined Betty, Mark, Marty M., and the ol' Perfessor as the Top Five.
This time, the computer programer from the DC area swapped places with the apple farmer from Southwest Iowa...with Bill E. snatching the Big Trophy away from Marty M.
The two of them became not just good friends, but GREAT ones (teaming up from time to time as The All-American Ragtime Boys), and Marty M. and Bill E. went into 1992- the second straight fifteen-player year- having old-time piano fans wondering which man would reign supreme in the Regular Division.
Then Paul G. ended his two-year hiatus from OTPP...and he was joined by Reg newcomers Ginny Kaiser and Brian Holland (sorry, Motown fans...not THAT Brian Holland). Meanwhile, Doris Barnes ended a seven-year stay away from the contest.
In the Junior Division, Adam D. and Marty S. competed against three newcomers, one of whom we'd be hearing about for years to come: Ryan Casteel, a Missourian named Max Schiltz, and a Nebraskan named Julie Ann Smith.
Julie Ann came within three points of derailing Adam in 1992...but she'd go on to make a name for herself another way. Now known as Julie Smith Phillips, she's one of the world's best-known harpists (and a noted harp instructor as well).
If you'd like to know more about this harp giant (she got started on the instrument the year before she made her OTPP debut), go to www.harpjas.com.
As things turned out in the RDs for '92, Dale and Mark kept their places among the division's Top Five...and Marty Mincer came out ahead of Bill Edwards.
And Paul Gronemeier came out ahead of everybody and got the crown he'd been after.
You could bet that Paul was going to come back for 1993...and he did. It was a year in which the field ballooned to nineteen contestants- five JDs and fourteen RDs. What's more, eight newcomers (all but one in the Reg Division) fueled the field's growth.
The lone new JD'er for 1993, Dalton Ridenhour, would come back to Decatur for more. And of the seven RD newcomers, only Bob Milne had any real name recognition in old-time piano coming into that year's OTPP. And like Dalton, Bob would come back to the contest...but in Bob's case, not to compete. (I loved his workshops.)
Richard Ramsey, Chuck Bregman, Patty Davis, David Galster, Erma Ryan, and I rounded out the rookie field. There we were, thirteen RDs trying to take Paul's long-sought crown away...and four JDs trying to prevent Adam's clean sweep (something Julie Ann almost did a year earlier).
While I stank out the Holiday Inn, Bob lived up to his reputation as a top-notch pianist...and Richard was a revelation.
Richard and Bob joined Bill, Marty M., and Mark in the RD finals...and in the process, pushed Paul out of the money line. Somebody else would win the contest's top cash prize- now $1,200- as well as the Traveling Trophy.
Marty M. was that someone else...and he became the first champion in either division to get the crown back after watching someone else take it away. And that made him the OTPP version of Muhammad Ali.
About 24 hours earlier, Adam D. punched his ticket into the Regular Division. But his closest competitor this time wasn't Julie Ann S. or Marty S.
After sitting out 1992, Kris came back to place second in the JDs.
I didn't do as well as I'd hoped (all the juniors beat me)...but I learned a lot from that first OTPP experience (including learning to play "Tickled to Death" after hearing the then thirteen-year-old Julie Ann Smith nail it).
Even so, Dale, Brian, and other contestants- as well as other OTPP fans- encouraged me to come back for 1994.
I did.
Dalton did, too.
In fact, he and I were the only two 1993 newcomers who also weighed in as competitors the following year.
Marty M., Bob M., Bill E., and Brian H. came to Decatur's Holiday Inn during 1994's Memorial Day weekend...but not to compete. (Matter of fact, Bob and Bill ran some workshops that weekend. And theirs were the very first workshops in contest history.)
Meanwhile, the field shrank enormously...to ten, five in each division. On top of that, each division boasted just one newbie.
The lone first-time JD contestant this time was Cecilia Fleisher (whose version of "American Beauty" I really loved)...and the only new RD contestant blew everyone away.
Quebec native Mimi Blais came into the 1990s as a classical pianist. She got the ragtime bug soon after, and then...and then...ended a four-year absence from performing arts centers to launch a concert called "Around Scott Joplin."
That did it.
Thanks to playing ragtime, Mimi received the acclaim that couldn't come from playing classical music...and by 1994, she was ready to see what she could do in the best-known ragtime competition in America.
Mimi skunked everybody. Matter of fact, the last competition piece she played, Scott Joplin's "The Crush Collision March," nailed it for me.
You talk about unstoppable!
It was a year I'll never forget...not only because it was the year all five Regular Division hopefuls (Mimi, Mark, Dale, Adam D., and I) made it to the semifinals AND finals, but, most importantly, it was when Marty Sammon became the Junior Division kingpin...and Mimi Blais raised the bar exponentially in the Regular Division.
The 1980s were an era of big events and political stunts; an era of style over substance.
C. Everett Koop (Ronald Reagan's surgeon general) wanted to wear his old uniform from his days in the Navy to his new job...and because of that, all subsequent top doctors have had to don the fruit salad.
There was Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No!" campaign to fight drug abuse. (And, by the way...alcohol is a drug, too. And that's a whole other post in itself.)
And what about the "effort" to prove the value of teachers in America...AKA the program to send one into space?
About four months after Francis Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Judith Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, Ronald McNair, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe- said teacher- lost their lives in the Challenger explosion, the "Hands Across America" event took place.
It didn't help that the 1986 Memorial Day weekend was chilly and misty outside in Monticello, IL. (Monticello was one of the "Hands Across America" stops.)
And it ultimately helped drive the Monticello Railway Museum to look for a new place to hold its top fundraiser, the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest. For '86, the organization used Monticello High School's football field as the contest venue rather than the museum itself.
It was too much to take for everybody...so, the MRM made The Decision.
The organization took the whole show to the then Holiday Inn...in Decatur, IL.
And for the first time, OTPP wouldn't have to directly fight atmospheric conditions.
That first indoor iteration of Ted Lemen's claim to fame drew eighteen contestants, with all but two competing in the Regular Division.
So while Neil Moe only had to get past Cathy Wamsley to become the first three-time Junior Division champion, all sixteen Regular Division hopefuls advanced to the division's 1987 semifinals. Three of the adult contestants were newcomers to OTPP who'd make names for themselves in later years: Dorothy Baldwin, Betty Keller, and...the "Perfessor" himself, Bill Edwards.
And, as things turned out, Bill and Dorothy joined Linda Harmon (a newcomer from the previous year) and longtime participant Paul Gronemeier in the contest finals...won by a man who, at that time, made the Washington, DC area his stomping grounds: Ron Trotta.
As the event's final outdoor Regular champ, Ron staged a near-Garrison finish (instead of standing in last place in the 1986 RD prelims, he was fifth; Ron moved up to third at the end of the RD semis). A year later, Ron started out in first place once the 1987 RD first round came to an end and stayed on top until he was officially declared the contest's first indoor Reg champion.
OTPP '87 was a success.
With that in mind, the contestant field for 1988 jumped up to 23...twenty RDs and three JDs.
In the Junior field, only Cathy had a 1986-87 connection...but she still wasn't able to connect with the division's top prize. Neither did Neil's sister, Mary Ann.
Mary Ann and Cathy could only watch as Dax Baumgartner inaugurated his own three-year stay at the head of the Junior Division.
Mary Ann's brother was part of the activity that continued to reshape the Regular Division- a contingent that saw Ed and Janet Kaizer come back for some more prize money (and in Janet's case, a chance to snatch the Traveling Trophy out of Ron's grip and get the statue back for herself). Dale Wells came back, too.
To top it all off, five newcomers who'd go on to become huge names in old-time piano made the trip to Decatur: Dick Zimmerman, Todd Robbins, Jim Radloff, Marty Mincer,
and Betty's daughter Sue.
And after two rounds, it looked as if Sue (instead of Janet) would be the one to give Ron a taste of his own medicine.
But the ex-math teacher from the Nation's Capital became the third undefeated RD champion...after breaking a semifinal-round tie with Sue Keller. And Janet, Paul, Linda, and Marty joined Ron and Sue as Reg finalists.
1989 saw other OTPP changes besides a Regular Division field without Ron Trotta and his near-Garrison finishes. First of all, the contest would- for the first time- employ four judges (instead of the three of previous years).
Second, two new JD contestants (Jason Planck and Christina Sparks) would try to stop Dax from successfully defending his newly-won crown.
Plus, in the RD, seven newcomers would join in the hunt (nineteen performers strong) to hoist the Traveling Trophy. Three of the biggest names were a Michigander named Taslimah Bey,
a Bay Stater named Mark Lutton,
and...an Illinoisan named Julie McClarey.
Julie had the shortest trip of them all: She and her husband Steve lived on the other side of town from Decatur's Holiday Inn.
Five cash prizes (not the six of 1986-88) awaited the nineteen Regular Division hopefuls...and after missing out in '88, "Perfessor" Bill made sure he'd get a check from the contest in his third try. Marty, Sue, and- you probably guessed it- Paul were 1989 RD finalists, too.
In fact, 1989 represented Paul Gronemeier's best chance since 1980 to jump into the OTPP winner's circle. (He finished second to Bruce Petsche in '80.)
But Julie McClarey's near-perfect technique and enthusiastic performances prevented Paul from getting his hands on the Big Dough.
And, as things turned out, the McClareys could really use the championship money.
After all, Steve's and Julie's family was growing.
What kind of effect would a growing family have on Julie's chance to defend her newly-earned title?
I'll have the answer when I come back for Part Three. (Stay tuned!)
Oh, by the way...a Bay Stater is someone from Massachusetts.
