Feted in Fantasy Land

By Sharon Lakey

At mid­night on Octo­ber 10, 2008, Winona Gadapee was still fly­ing high as she and her hus­band, Arnie, touched down at the Burling­ton air­port. In a few short hours, she would be shar­ing the expe­ri­ences of two whirl­wind days in Nashville while lead­ing a “Music with Winona” ses­sion at the St. Johns­bury Health and Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Center.

Dressed in the same turquoise dress and jack­et that she wore at the Vol­un­teer of the Year award cer­e­mo­ny, Winona arrived at the Cen­ter at 10:30 a.m. sharp. The piano she has played for the last nine years await­ed her in the great room, and a small group of res­i­dents were already gath­ered there in expec­ta­tion of her arrival. As she greet­ed them per­son­al­ly, more wheel­chairs began cir­cling up, and a caged ring-necked dove came to life with throaty coo­ing and bow­ing. “He loves music, too,” con­fid­ed Mil­lie Whit­ney, who was seat­ed beside me, hold­ing an open book of songs in her lap.

When the room was filled, Winona began by speak­ing. “I feel like I’ve been to Fan­ta­sy Land!” she exclaimed. And then, pulling a note from her bag, she shared some of the inter­est­ing points of the Gay­lord Opry­land Hotel where the event took place. “It’s all under a glass dome that cov­ers 4.5 acres and hous­es 824 rooms. We were on the fifth floor with a bal­cony over­look­ing two water­falls and a jet foun­tain that shot up 85 feet in the air. Arnie heard from one of the 3,000 employ­ees who work there that the rooms run about $400 a night!” 

There were “oohs” and “ahs” from the appre­cia­tive audi­ence as she passed around some post­cards. Bob Woods, who sat in the back of the room with his wife, Iva, smiled broad­ly. “Hey, Bob,” she said, “those ros­es you gave me before I left still look good on my counter.” 

And then she sat down at the piano. A music teacher of many years, Winona’s hands moved com­fort­ably to the key­board, and a flur­ry of notes float­ed out across the hard­wood floor. Her sopra­no voice led the group through “It’s a Grand Old Flag,” fol­lowed by a num­ber of old, famil­iar songs like “Roll Out the Bar­rel,” “Home on the Range” and “I’m a Yan­kee Doo­dle Dandy.” She has made up six dif­fer­ent sets of books for her singers, so they have a vari­ety of tunes to enjoy. 

Break­ing between songs, she shared high­lights of the con­ven­tion: a spell­bind­ing lun­cheon speak­er, Chris Gard­ner, who is the author of the book and sub­ject of the movie The Pur­suit of Hap­py­ness; cock­tails and a steak din­ner, cooked to per­fec­tion, for 1800 peo­ple; and the top­per, a con­cert by Wynon­na Judd. “Peo­ple had an easy time remem­ber­ing my name,” Winona joked. 

But per­haps it was the peo­ple she met, the oth­er vol­un­teers who were being hon­ored, that impressed her the most. There was the 13-year-old girl who had already devot­ed three years to writ­ing let­ters, doing nails and hair, and being a chat­ty ado­les­cent friend for res­i­dents of her cen­ter. There were the four Girl Scouts, who earned their Gold­en Badges, by inter­view­ing, pho­tograph­ing, and pub­lish­ing the sto­ries of 40 res­i­dents in their cen­ter. There was the car sales­man who took charge of a float and trans­porta­tion for chal­lenged chil­dren in his cen­ter. Forty-eight states were rep­re­sent­ed, each with their own com­pelling sto­ries of love.

Near the end of the ses­sion, Winona rose to show her award, an impres­sive engraved plaque. “I under­stand the Cen­ter will be get­ting one of these, too,” she said. She shared that the awards cer­e­mo­ny was care­ful­ly chore­o­graphed, requir­ing sev­er­al run-through prac­tices until per­fec­tion was reached. Then she let the res­i­dents know that she had vol­un­teered to speak briefly before the large crowd. 

Hold­ing her award in front of her, she per­son­al­ized the words that she spoke that day to the crowd: “I am amazed that any­one can be rec­og­nized to this degree for some­thing that I enjoy so much. Thank you. I gain as much from you as you receive from me.”