An Ohio school’s marching band could be the first U.S. high-school band to tour the People’s Republic of China. The Mount Healthy High School band, which has scheduled a tour in June 1984, has only to figure out a way to raise the $200,000 required to take the trip.
Organized under the auspices of the Friendship Ambassadors Foundation, a New Jersey group that coordinates exchange programs, the trip will send 88 band members to China to give free concerts in city squares, schools, and churches, according to Russell Hinkle, who has been Mount Healthy’s band director for 24 years.
Mr. Hinkle said he has taken band students on 14 trips, to places like Holland, Belgium, France, Germany, Mexico, and Canada. “We just try to expose the kids to as many cultures and ways of life as we can,” he said.
To raise the money needed for the trip, Mr. Hinkle said, students will hold garage sales, fruitcake sales, and car washes, and will approach Cincinnati-area businesses and in-dividuals for contributions.
The four Roman Catholic nuns who sued their bishop last year for breach-of-contract over their dismissal from jobs at the Sacred Heart School in Hampton, N.H., say the Roman Catholic Diocese of Manchester has not lived up to an out-of-court settlement reached last May that said the diocese would help them find new teaching positions.
All four are still out of work and have heard very little from the diocese.
“We wrote to the assistant superintendent of the diocese saying that we’re not only willing to teach but also to substitute, yet we haven’t heard from anyone,” according to Sister Catherine Colliton. She said the only word she or the other nuns had received from the diocese was a request for resumes and qualifications and notification of a diocesan school workshop.
She claimed that with her 20 years’ experience in the schools, two years ago she would have been hired immediately for any new job opening in one of the five nearby parochial schools. Now, she said, her reputation and that of the other nuns has been damaged.
