Choir Singer Retires After 85 Years
PHILLIPS: He's a man so passionate about singing he's been in a choir for 85 years. It's only now for health reasons that Don Stenabaugh of Georgia is stepping away. You've got to think, God understands. CNN writer Karen Waygood has his story.</s>KAREN WAYGOOD, CNN WRITER: Don Stenabaugh is rehearsing with his church's choir in Doraville, Georgia for the last time.</s>DON STENABAUGH, TENOR: My mother was a junior choir director and played the piano. So when I was 5 years old I was drafted and so I've been singing in choirs ever since.</s>WAYGOOD: Don turns 90 this month. That's 85 years of singing. And not just here at Winters Chapel United Methodist Church. Don says he's sung with choirs in all 50 states, the four he's lived in and the rest he traveled to with his wife Virginia who passed away seven years ago. Don says if they didn't find a choir rehearsal to sit in on --</s>STENABAUGH: I would just sit in the congregation and sing the harmony of whatever hymns we were singing and people around me would join me and come around and say oh, you ought to sing in the choir.</s>WAYGOOD: Music minister Thom Suddreth calls Don a gentle soul and a great teacher of patience, of perseverance and of not taking yourself too seriously.</s>THOM SUDDRETH, MUSIC MINISTER: He comes in, contributes what he can and lets that be enough. And I think that's a great lesson.</s>STENABAUGH: I don't sing the notes that are written, but I make up my own harmony sometimes, and I know Thom hears it, but he just smiles at me.</s>WAYGOOD: You've been in so many choirs. What do you get out of singing?</s>STENABAUGH: Just the joy and the satisfaction of singing along. I just enjoy -- you know, I've been in -- like I said, I've been church all my life, and I just -- it's I guess my way of praising God for a wonderful life.</s>WAYGOOD: At 90, it's a little harder now for Don to get around. He decided a few months back that Easter Cantata would be his final performance and he liked the Winter's Chapel choir to know this.</s>STENABAUGH: I'm going to miss them. Yes. Yes.</s>WAYGOOD: One piece of advice you'd give them?</s>STENABAUGH: Keep singing. Keep singing.</s>WAYGOOD: Karen Waygood, CNN, Doraville, Georgia.