A (Three) Grand Opportunity

It’s not quite singing for their suppers, but high school musicians bound for opening ceremonies of the Sydney Olympics may well find themselves playing for their passage to Australia.

The 400 or so students from Irvine High, John F. Kennedy High in La Palma and El Dorado High in Placentia each must come up with $3,000--for a total of roughly $1.2 million--to afford the once-in-a-lifetime musical opportunity.

Ideally, they hope to raise enough to cover the whole tab. But by taking summer jobs, putting together garage sales and, yes, considering performing for a fee, the students and their families have scraped together about two-thirds of the cash so far.

Fund-raising was crippled last year when Olympic organizers ejected the corps of musicians after folks Down Under realized that more Americans than Aussies were playing. A lurch in public opinion and a lawsuit from the company arranging the band led Olympic organizers to change their tune and reinvite the kids, but only after the better part of last summer was lost.

Three months before departure, the students are trying to cajole and coax their communities to help defray the remaining fees as they also fit in extra practices and work on memorizing 20 or so pieces of new music.

A fortunate few families were able to simply write checks for the trip to Sydney. For the others, boosters are turning to a variety of cash-generating exercises, from selling commemorative pins and decals to hosting a toilet swap (really!) to holding a sort of adopt-a-band-member campaign, promising photos and postcards to people who sponsor individual musicians.

To raise a few extra dollars, Irvine parent Carol Cyrkin and saxophone-playing daughter Shannon excavated forgotten belongings from cupboards and storage to hold monthly garage sales. As a band fund-raiser, Cyrkin has helped arrange a June 17 toilet swap at Irvine High--where residents can exchange old, water-wasting toilets for more miserly ones--to help raise bucks for the band.

In return for hosting the event, the band gets $5 per swapped toilet from the local water district, which saves precious gallons. If toilet exchangers hire participating plumbers to install the commodes, the band gets $10 per installation. From 1,000 to 1,500 toilets are exchanged during a typical swap session.

Cyrkin’s strategy is part financial savvy, part force of will.

“What happens if we don’t raise [enough] money? It’s a nonissue,” Cyrkin said. “We will figure it out. We will get there. It would just be so much easier if we had help. We will beg, borrow or steal to find a way. Even if we have to play concerts in the last week for a buck a person, we’ll do it.”

So far, Irvine boosters have had the most success, raising about $95,000 to be split among families who need help paying their passage. About $35,000 came from the Irvine Co., and the students may play at a company function in return.

Kennedy band director Bob Anthony said his students have collected about $65,000 so far. “It’s a drop in the bucket,” he said. “We’re still looking for some maaaajor corporate sponsors.”

A chunk of Kennedy’s funds have come from sponsorship of individual students. Sponsors are promised regular postcards and photos from the flutists or percussionists they sponsor. A large silent auction benefiting the band is scheduled for June 11 at the La Palma Community Center.

Selling decals, holiday cards and stuffed bears has helped El Dorado raise at least $21,000 to be shared among the musicians, said parent Lois Monroe. The students have received contributions from Bank of America and the cities of Placentia and Yorba Linda. The band plans to participate in a Yorba Linda street fair June 11. A campaign in which individual musicians wrote letters to friends, doctors, dry cleaners and employers garnered another $52,000.

“We were looking to have more corporate sponsors support this band,” Monroe said. “I think because of the dis-invitation, we got the corporate packets out late, and a lot of corporations had already funded their causes for the year, and we were too late.”

Kennedy sophomore Fred Lee, a 16-year-old French horn player, said the students can hardly wait to visit Australia and strut their stuff before a television audience of millions. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance,” he said. “So all the work and fund-raising is very much worth it.”

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How You Can Help

Contributions to help cover the cost of the students’ airplane tickets, transportation, food and lodging can be sent to:

* El Dorado High Band Boosters Inc., P.O. Box 643, Placentia, CA 92871.

* Kennedy High School Sydney 2000 Olympic Band, 14502 Jersey Ave., Norwalk, CA 90650.

* Irvine High School/Sydney Olympic Band, PMB157, P.O. Box 57033, Irvine, CA 92619.