A Gift For Them and For Me

This post takes place over a few days worth of events, but bear with me. 

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Holy crap! I just found video that I thought I never had and it might make a huge difference in some people's lives. For a few years, I hosted a student open mic night at a local community college. And I recorded them so I'd have my own performances if I needed them. I also recorded the students (by default) but I would never release the video without permission. One month, I thought my camera wasn't working and so I didn't bother looking at any of the footage, which was a shame because that was the month the homeless man with the voice of an angel came by (it was awesome) and we ended up with a love-fest of all sorts of students and staff singing together.

It turned out that one of the students who performed that night died just a few weeks later. In July 2012, the student activities lead emailed me to ask if I had any video of that night because the student had sung. I checked and couldn't find any usable video and let Patricia know that. However, just now, I was deleting old video and I ran across this student singing, "I Will Always Love You," (with another student). 

I had the video all along, and I'd had no idea. Almost a year later, I've just emailed the student activities person with the link to it. 

Even though she died, tragically, her friends family will get this token of her singing the perfect song.

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The student activities person wants a DVD of all the footage I have of the student. I'll get it together this week and send it to her and she will get it to the student's family.

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I just finished creating/editing the video of the songs the student, who passed away, sang at the student open mic I hosted in March 2012 (it's the video I found randomly last week that I thought had been lost due to camera malfunction). She sang a number of spirituals, a blues number, and "I Will Always Love You." I created a DVD and I created a Menu Title Card that shows various images of her singing and laughing (gotta love screen capture). This way, when someone puts the DVD into a player, the first thing they will see is her smiling, singing, joyful face.

The activities person at the college has said she will get the DVD to her family. Off to drop it in the mail.

This makes me so happy that I record pretty much all my shows. If I hadn't recorded this one, we wouldn't be able to get this piece of her to her family. I'm grateful to P for offering to get the DVD to D's family.

To honor her here, I'm including one screen shot of her singing.