MIDDLEBURY — For their active, longtime volunteer service to the Middlebury community, the Sheldon Museum will recognize “T” and Cy Tall as the honorary chairs of the 21st annual Pops Concert and Fireworks Display to be held on Friday, June 28, on the grounds behind Middlebury College’s Mahaney Center for the Arts. The grounds open at 5:30 p.m., the Vermont Philharmonic Pops Concert starts at 7:30 p.m., and the evening concludes triumphantly at dark with a spectacular fireworks display.
Their childhood paths led them to Middlebury, to each other, and to volunteer service. T first came to Vermont as a Middlebury College freshman in 1961. Cow country was a far cry from where he was raised in the crab country of the Chesapeake Bay, but it seemed to suit him well. Upon his graduation T served in U.S. Army Artillery, reaching the rank of captain as battery commander in South Korea. He returned to Middlebury College, first as director of Student Activities, and later in the Development Office. His career took him to Western Reserve Academy for several years, but in 1979, he was back in Vermont to stay. Not long after that he met Cy Day while they were both serving as emergency medical technicians with the Middlebury Volunteer Ambulance Association.
Cy grew up in Shoreham and is a graduate of Middlebury Union High School and Acadia University in Nova Scotia. When she met T she was working with a local newspaper, but soon joined Evergreen Marketing where she spent 20 years. In 2001 she opened her own marketing consulting business, which she operated for over a decade. She now serves as chief marketing officer for Beau Ties Ltd. of Vermont in Middlebury.
T and Cy live in Cornwall, and have been actively engaged in many community organizations over the years. Between the two of them they have volunteered with the Middlebury Community Players; United Way of Addison County; Cornwall Historical Society; Addison County Home Health and Hospice; Red Cross; Rotary International; Green Up Vermont; Everybody Wins! Vermont; Habitat for Humanity; and the town of Cornwall. In 2006 they were recipients of the Middlebury College Bicentennial Citizens Award for Community Service.
The Henry Sheldon Museum has been one of the few places where both T and Cy are active volunteers. Cy has served as president, treasurer, trustee and volunteer over the course of the past 25 years. T has been a go-to volunteer at the museum, and is active with the local model railroad club that installs its very popular holiday train exhibit at the Sheldon — a not-to-be-missed annual event attended by hundreds of enthusiastic children and adults.
Both Cy and T have worked on the Sheldon Pops Concert and Fireworks event for many years. Sheldon Museum Executive Director Bill Brooks notes that “their activities as community volunteers continue. They are role models to us all. The Sheldon is pleased and privileged to acknowledge their service to the community.”
The presentation will be made at the Pops Concert to be performed by the Vermont Philharmonic, Vermont’s oldest community orchestra. The Philharmonic is led by its charismatic music director, Lou Kosma, a member of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. The celebratory musical program includes patriotic favorites “Washington Post March,” “Stars and Stripes Forever,” “God Bless America”; Broadway showstoppers from “Phantom of the Opera” and “West Side Story”; and worldwide acclaimed selections from the Beatles and Duke Ellington; as well as a few well known light opera standards sung by special guest soloist, Adam Laurence Herskowitz, an acclaimed Wagnerian tenor and a member of the Metropolitan Opera.
The Sheldon promises a family evening for picnicking, music, fun, fireworks, and fellowship in celebration of the nation’s independence and in recognition of community service, especially that of T and Cy Tall. Tickets to the concert and fireworks are available at the Sheldon Museum, 1 Park St., Middlebury, by phone at 802-388-3117, through its website at www.henrysheldonmuseum.org, or through the Middlebury College Box Office, www.boxoffice.middlebury.edu.