With John Adam’s having emigrated to America to try to further his
musical career, Gill and I began planning more events together. Our
Christmas show found a new home at my local Scout Hall in Chapeltown,
Sheffield, South Yorkshire.
Our first big concert together came about because of one of my
workmates at Tinsley Bridge Ltd, Jeff Gibson. He was involved with a
charity called ‘The Friends Of Chernobyl’s Children’, a charity that specializes in bringing children from Ukraine and Belarus over to the U.K.
once a year, for medical checks and to give them a good time and some
relief from their devastated homeland, or what is left of it after the
nuclear disaster. Geoff would often collect unwanted items such as
clothing, books, paper, pens, anything that the children might use.
I asked if they might be interested in us doing a concert to raise funds for F.O.C.C. And everything started from there. Jeff got in touch
with Geoff Oldale, who was the co-
F.O.C.C. So planning got underway for what was to be quite a big, and
successful event. The venue was to be Hilltop Sports and Social club in
Dronfield.
We split the show into three sections. First part was John Denver
songs, and the other two sections were a variety of 60’s to 90’s hits.
We also invited another friend of ours Angela Sims, to play violin, on a
couple of songs with us, and she did a solo spot too. At the end of the
evening we were amazed when Geoff Oldale announced that somewhere
in the region of £1250 had been raised for F.O.C.C.
Later that year we got an invite back to Dronfield to meet the children on their annual visit. A visit that the concert had helped to fund.
We turned up at the school where the children were having their daily
lessons. We didn’t know what to expect as we arrived.
We expected them to be very timid. As we opened the door to enter the classroom we were hit by a wall of sound “HELLO!!!” They didn’t know many words of English and their opening outburst just about used up all of their vocabulary. They had two teachers with them who acted as interpreters.
After learning each of their names we got a guitar out and sang them a few songs. Although their English was very limited, they knew, and sang along to ‘Take Me Home Country Roads’, word for word, even if they didn’t know what it meant, they knew the song ! John Denver told the story many times about how his songs are well known all around the world, and we got to witness this first hand.
One of the children looked like a mini version of John Denver, and he took particular interest in my guitar. We sat him on a chair and he strummed the guitar at one end as I made the chord shapes for him at the other end. It was so wonderful to see how the profits from the concert had been put to good use, and to hear the kids singing along so happily was priceless to us. We played and sang with them at their
leaving party on the last night before they returned home. It was all a
wonderful experience to play a small part in making the children’s visit a happy one.
We went on to do another show for F.O.C.C. In 2001 at the Winding Wheel theatre in Chesterfield, Derbyshire. Situated just across the road from Chesterfield’s famous Crooked spire this was a huge theatre, and another big show for us.
Geoff Oldale presented us with a card before the show. It was a
Good Luck card, which we opened just before we went out on stage.
When we read it, it took us by surprise, and gave us a real boost. It was from the Patron of Friends Of Chernobyl’s Children,
Sir Norman Wisdom.
During my time singing with Gill, I met many new friends. We both did. Graham, Elizabeth, Kirsten and Timothy Shelton came into our lives in a big way, becoming concert organizers, and indeed our agents in the Coventry area, having arranged three full scale concerts for us, and numerous private events. Timothy, a very fine flute player, is a member of Timberwolf, and joins us on stage whenever he can. The Shelton family have become more than just friends. We see them more as an extension of our family, the Coventry branch of honorary ‘Sharman’s ! We love having them around on show days, and for private get together’s whenever we can.
Also along our travels we met Barry & Gill Wiltshire, who also have become show organizers, ‘agents’ and good friends from the Castle Bromwich area.
Margaret ,Eric, Lyn, David and Kate Hardy from Suffolk travel many miles to just about every event that we do. Seamus Vickers, a long time friend of both of us, who gets to every event that he can.
Christine Moon, President of Friends Of John Denver.
The list goes on... I have met so many nice people through the
music of John Denver.
