Rex Bickers, FCHS ’70, guest editor for Alumni Spotlight

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Susan Adams, NAHS Class of 1964

Kelly Clemons Kingsley, FCHS ’86, guest contributor

Susan Adams didn’t make the usual choice of choir versus band when she started high school. She pursued music opportunities everywhere she could, in the classroom and in Bel Canto, one of New Albany’s most cherished extracurricular groups. Moreover, she went beyond that, enjoying the role of accompanist for students at music contests and in musical theater as well. She continued her education at Smith College in Massachusetts. After student teaching at Floyd Central in 1969, she chose IU to earn a master’s degree.

She returned to FC, teaching there for 35 years. She built her own career by adding one thing to another, constantly. She started choir for eighthgraders, handbells for seventh graders, ultimately developing two full junior high choir classes and then expanding handbells beyond junior high. She took handbells groups “on the road” for over 600 appearances, covering thousands of miles. Tom Weatherston sought her help to bring theater to junior high students. She said she’d be happy to help with musicals. Eventually, Susan ran junior high theater entirely, directing 38 productions in total.

When I first met Kelly Kingsley, she thought that I needed a little taste of junior high choir, with Ms. Adams in the classroom. She burst into song, with this:

A tutor who tooted the toot,
Tried to tutor two tooters to toot.
Said the two to the tutor,
“Is it harder to toot or…
to tutor two tooters to toot?”

Evidently, it was always followed by whistling, ever faster and faster. Kelly recalls “the fun is what we all remember”, but she understands it today in a different light. It’s one of the many tools that a teacher uses – – helping kids to care about enunciating, listening carefully, getting it right in the words and notes they sing.

In the late 1980s, Susan contemplated earning a Ph.D. in music education. She chose instead to make a difficult schedule work, while still teaching. She completed certification as a specialist in music education. When Highland Hills opened. Susan left Floyd Central and taught middle schoolers, for eight more years.

Long before she left the classroom, church music was a key part of her devotion to singers and ringers alike. She was choir director at Central Christian Church for 25 years and subsequently at the Corydon Christian Church for five years. She joined the Association of Disciple Musicians four decades ago. She was the Association’s president in 1987 when the notion emerged to create an entirely new hymnal. It took several years of planning, forming an editorial board and choosing over 600 hymns. Chalice Hymnal was first published in 1995, and its most recent reprinting was in 2019. It is widely used in churches across America.

Susan has been similarly committed to local organizations including the Hedden Study Music Club and Kentuckiana Mensa. She has been active in New Albany Rotary, taking a lead role in both the Floyd Central and New Albany Interact Clubs. She was inducted into the NAHS Hall of Fame in 2016.

I asked Susan if Kelly could sum up some of the things that have lived on from her Floyd Central years.

Kelly told me: “No teacher can truly know how far her wisdom will expand. Over the span of 43 years, Ms. Adams changed students’ lives and those students took that wisdom and continued to pass it down. Much that I was taught, I teach still. The seeds have been scattered. In most cases, no one knows all the places where they have taken root. I am thankful that Ms. Adams scattered some in my direction!”

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Amy Hutchison, FCHS Class of 1987

Kelly Clemons Kingsley, FCHS ’86, and Brad Hutchison, FCHS ’83,
guest contributors

For Amy Hutchison, the words “student director” opened a magic door, early in her high school career. Glenn Edwards recognized her creativity and “bossiness” as natural ingredients for a good director. She went on to direct The Mousetrap, collaborating with Veronica Pfeiffer (FC ’86) on set and costume design. Amy earned her bachelor’s degree in directing at the Conservatory for Theatre Arts at Webster University. Her training continued at Actors Theatre (Louisville) and at the renowned “HGO” Houston Grand Opera. In 1995, Amy made her professional directing debut with Carmen at Opera Columbus. Classics from “the old world” by Donizetti, Puccini and Verdi would continue to dot Amy’s career. But she has consistently focused on “the new world”: American opera of the 20th century and daring new works by contemporary composers.

George and Ira Gershwin helped to create a new era… the era of American opera… with Porgy and Bess in 1935. It toured the world in the 1950s and it was reborn in the 1970s (notably at HGO, in Houston). For Amy, Porgy and Bess became a key pivot point in her career. She played a vital role in introducing (and reintroducing) it to audiences across Europe and Japan, including Milan’s La Scala and La Teatro Fenice in Venice.

In a separate, yet similar chapter of Amy’s career, you’ll find a connection to Houston’s HGO again. Maurice Sendak, the renowned author, and illustrator of children’s books made a leap, in 1980, from the printed page to creating set designs there, teaming up with director Frank Corsaro. Seventeen years later, the duo brought a radical re-imagination of the century-old opera, Hansel and Gretel, to the stage. Since then, touring companies have taken it everywhere. As part of the directing team, Amy has staged productions from Indianapolis to Zurich to the Juilliard School (broadcast on PBS as part of its “Live from Lincoln Center” series). In Chicago, Amy has skated boldly into the 21st century with new American works, such as A View from the Bridge set in post-war Brooklyn, Troubled Island, an epic look at slavery in colonial Haiti, and As One, exploring a transgender woman’s journey to self-discovery. Amy works with a diverse array of contemporary opera professionals, broadening the experience for aficionados and the opera-curious alike. She is a champion for inclusivity on stage and off.

Amy was inducted into the FC Hall of Fame in 2016. She already had a long record of substantial social leadership. She is an Artistic Advisor to South Shore Opera Company, and she serves on the Advisory Boards of South Chicago Dance Theatre and Folks Operetta. She proudly serves on the Board of Chicago’s LGBT About Face Theatre and is a longtime member of the Classroom Grants Awarded $36,722 in August $17,524 in September philanthropic group She100.

For the “Q&A” to Amy’s profile, her brother asked for an update on her daughter Frances, who recently graduated from high school.

Amy replied “The apple has not fallen far from the tree. Frances currently works on the production team of NBC’s Chicago P.D. and in January, she’s enrolling at NYU, aiming to major in Film and Television. I think we’ll see her name in the on-screen credits of who-knows-what, sooner rather than later.”

Read the entire September 2021 Legacy Ledger (Issue 13).

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