Gospel Choir’s Singing Helps Save Young Lives : Music: Inspired by a mother’s dream, a Pacoima group uses uplifting songs to keep youths out of trouble.

When the Pacoima Community Gospel Choir came to sing at the Ventura School in October, 1988, the music struck a chord in 20-year-old DeWitt Smith.

Smith, serving a 2 1/2-year cocaine-possession sentence at the school, a California Youth Authority facility in Camarillo, said he started by tapping his foot. A little later he was snapping his fingers. Then clapping. Finally, he was joining in and singing along with the choir. By the end of the 35-minute performance, Smith said, he was “moving almost the whole bench” as his 250-pound frame swayed to the music.

“I was just overjoyed,” he said. “You don’t usually feel like that when you’re incarcerated.”

Recalling that Sunday afternoon, Smith said: “I was like, ‘One day I want to do that.’ ”

Last week, Smith, who was released from custody Oct. 4, did just that--he went to his first practice with the choir. He said he now looks forward to the day when he can return to Ventura School--this time as a member of the choir--and make someone else feel the way he did that afternoon.

Smith’s story is what the Pacoima Community Gospel Choir is all about. For the past 13 years, the 25-member group has used gospel music to relay a message of hope to young people who often have none.

Founded in 1977, the choir began as a way to keep young people off the streets. Out of the choir grew a host of services for young people that were incorporated in 1980 as the Pacoima Community Youth Cultural Center. The center offers tutoring, martial arts classes, health education and a drama group.

The choir has remained the organization’s centerpiece, but over the years its makeup and purpose have changed slightly. The choir’s members, who are in their 20s and 30s, are older than those in the original group. And most of the choir’s performances each year are at juvenile detention centers, like Ventura School.

“We want to bring them up,” said choir member Betty Doss, referring to the youths. “We want to show them that there is hope.”

“We’re reaching out to try to make a difference,” said Jane McGlory, 56, founder of the choir.

The choir, and much of what followed, is the product of one woman’s dream. Literally. Since 1977, McGlory has acted as a sort of mother hen, making sure that the organization she envisioned in a dream stays true to its original purpose: keeping the young people of the northeastern San Fernando Valley away from crime and drugs by giving them something else to do.

But the seed for the choir was planted in bitter soil.

McGlory’s oldest son, Bill, died on Thanksgiving, 1974, from a heroin overdose. He had been home just over 30 days after a three-year stint in the Army, including a tour of duty in Vietnam. McGlory said her son went into the Army a nonsmoker and came out addicted to heroin.

“I buried him at 21, and it’s not a good feeling,” McGlory said. “That’s been the hardest pill I’ve had to swallow in this life so far.”

But out of her son’s death, McGlory said, she found a mission.

“I’ve dedicated my life to helping young people not go to an early grave and to helping them find a better life,” she said. “I want to help another parent not have to feel the hurt I was feeling.”

During the next few years, McGlory met with the young people in her community on a one-on-one basis, telling her story and warning them of the dangers of the fast life. But repeated visits to Rucker’s Mortuary for the funerals of young people showed McGlory that her message wasn’t reaching enough of them.

So she prayed for guidance. The answer, she said, came in a dream.

“I was asleep one night and I dreamed about this beautiful choir,” McGlory said. “I sat straight up in bed and said, ‘That’s the answer. . . . Young people like music, and gospel music has a message.”

Sixteen people showed up for the choir’s first rehearsal in June, 1977, in the youth room of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Pacoima. That first meeting was informal; there was no printed music. But McGlory laid down the rules of the choir, rules that still apply today. No smoking. No drinking. And, to be sure, no drugs.

Within three months, word of the choir spread and membership grew to a high of 75. A month after the choir was established, a drama group was formed. From there, McGlory said, things began to blossom and the center was incorporated in 1980.

McGlory used the money from her son’s insurance to buy the green three-bedroom house next to her own. That became the center’s first home. After the center moved to a city-owned building on Glenoaks Boulevard in 1982, McGlory turned the house into a halfway house for young men just released from custody. That’s where Smith lives now.

Gospel music might seem incongruous with reaching young toughs in a juvenile facility, but those involved with the choir say that’s not necessarily so. Much of today’s popular music has its roots in gospel. And for many of those in the facility, the music has a double meaning. Gospel grew out of “the pain and suffering of the slaves,” said Howard Green, the center’s first vice president. But the music is optimistic.

And for sheer energy, nothing beats gospel. When the group gets rolling, it brings the music--and the audience--to life. At a recent rehearsal the choir swayed and clapped through a set of about five songs.

“For that individual who has been exposed to gospel music, it gives him comfort,” Green said. “Everything is gone, but he can fall back on something he knew as he was growing up.”

“We’re trying to say that your life can change and you don’t have to go back” to jail, said John Nixon, the youth center’s chaplain.