Published: June 29, 2009 08:22 am      

Gatwoods honored at music camp

When representatives of music clubs from across Kentucky met for lunch Friday to honor scholarship recipients in Eastern Kentucky University’s Stephen Foster Music Camp, they had a pair of special guests on hand.

EKU retirees Dean and Grace Gatwood, both 91, were honored for their contribution to the scholarships that Richmond’s Cecilian Club provides to help local Foster Music Camp students with camp tuition.

The 76 scholarships the club presented this year were named for the Gatwoods in gratitude for a generous contribution to the club’s scholarship fund, said Martha Davidson, a past Cecilian Club president who serves on the Foster Music Camp board.

“When the Gatwoods’ many friends learned of their donation and the honor that would be paid them, they contributed another $6,000 in their honor.

The money will be added to an endowment that will permanently fund scholarships in the Gatwoods’ name every year,” she said.

Others who wish to honor the Gatwoods by donating to the fund may mail tax-deductible donations to Davidson at 109 Aberdeen Drive, Richmond, KY 40475-1367.

The Gatwoods, who moved to Richmond in 1947, have had a long association with both the Foster Music Camp and the Cecilian Club.

“All three of their children and several of their grandchildren attended the camp,” Davidson said, “and all three of their children grew up to be musicians.”

Grace Gatwood, who worked for most of her career in the EKU registrar’s office, belonged to the Cecilian Club for 25 years and once served as its president.

Dean Gatwood, who taught art for 37 years at the university, designed the logo for the Kentucky Federation of Music Clubs, of which the Cecilian Club is an affiliate.

Foster Music Camp, founded in 1936 by Professor James Van Peursem, is the second oldest such summer program in the nation.

Of the 530 students who attended this year’s camp, about 80 percent received scholarship assistance, $18,360 in all, Davidson said. Although most of the campers came from Kentucky, 10 states were represented, according to Ben Walker, camp director.

Other affiliates of the state music-club federation also provide scholarship aid to students from their areas, and most had representatives present at Friday’s luncheon to honor the recipients.

The National Federation of Music Clubs funded four camp scholarships this year, and two of them went to Madison Central High School students, Aryauna Stull and John Combs.

In addition to the permanent Foster Music Camp scholarships that honor him and his wife, Dean Gatwood has another enduring attachment to Madison County, Davidson said. He set to music a poem written during World War II by EKU English professor William L. Keene.

“Bill Keene was distressed by the number of young men who left Eastern for military service during World War II and did not return,” Gatwood said Friday. “In 1944, he wrote a poem to express his feelings.”

Years later, when both professors were members of the Richmond Kiwanis Club, Keene asked Gatwood, a World War II veteran, to set the poem to music.

Although he taught only art at EKU, Gatwood took a double major in art and music education at George Peabody College in Nashville and had taught public school music and art in Covington before he joined the college-teaching ranks.

The poem, titled “Our Unreturning,” first was publicly sung to Gatwood’s composition by the Richmond Choral Society in 1986 during the Madison County Bicentennial. A recording was included in the bicentennial time capsule buried in front of the county courthouse.

The Richmond First Christian Church choir has sung “Our Unreturning” on several occasions since, Davidson said.

Not long after its initial choral performance, the committee that erected Madison County’s Vietnam War Memorial inscribed Keene’s poem to the monument.

The Gatwoods, who now live with their son Dwight and his wife Dianne in Martin, Tenn., dropped by the courthouse Friday after the luncheon to visit the monument.

Bill Robinson can be reached at brobinson@richmondregister.com or at 624-6622.