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                                Singing
                                            at the
White House
  The Wisconsin Singers' year begins
with a week-long rehearsal camp
in late August and ends at final exams
in the spring. It's an overstuffed year:
in addition to the full-time process
of getting an education, there are
forty concerts to be staged, most
of them necessitating long hours of
travel, and there are weekly rehearsals,
usually filling Sunday afternoons.
So the troops are ready to fall out
when the school year ends.
  But this year they stretched their
season. There came an invitation for
a June 20th appearance before the
Grocery Manufacturers of America
holding a national meeting at the
Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs,
W. Va. Then, said the National Parks
Service, since the Singers were prac-
tically in the neighborhood, why not
swing over to Washington by the
22nd, to repeat the performance
they gave last year on the White
House Elipse?
   Who's going to refuse an invita-
tion to either of those places?
   So as the school year ended, thirty
Singers went home just about long
enough to look for a summer job
that would give them those days off,
then to repack and head back to Madi-
son to fly out on June 19th. (Three
didn't leave from here: Jeff Eckerle
went out from Gurnee, Ill., where
he's in the show at Great America;
Mark Ziebell took off from the cast of
Grand 01' Opry in Nashville; and
John Jacobson came up from Orlando
and the show at Disneyworld.)
  There were the expectedly un-
After waiting outside the grounds before
the reception for Prime Minister Fraser,
Singers' names are checked by guard
against a carefully prepared list (top
photos). Singers' director Rod Witte
(above) runs a motel-room rehearsal
before the Greenbrier appearance. (Left)
Wednesday morning's quick show for
network newscasters.
expected changes. Australian Prime
Minister John Malcolm Fraser was
due to arrive in Washington on Tues-
day, June 21, and there would be a
state reception on the White House
lawns. Suddenly his arrival was
moved back a day, which meant
the Singers' concert moved up one.
So they played the Greenbrier on
Monday night, flew out at dawn the
next day and did their White House
performance that morning, but
then were included in the select
group allowed onto the grounds for
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