Loretta Tom (photo by Deb Anderson)
Cheri Emahiser
Our president Claudia Dutcher Kistler invites you to join us as we begin our spring concert rehearsals on Sunday, Jan. 8, 2023. The music is fun. Tanya Elias is a director who brings out the best in the chorus. You will find friendly, welcoming members here in the SaddleBrooke Singers. If you haven’t sung in a while, no worries, it will come back to you.
Rehearsals are at the SaddleBrooke One Activity Center, located at 64518 Galveston Lane, from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. There you are likely to meet one of our veteran members, Loretta Tom. Loretta joined the SaddleBrooke Singers in 2005.
Piano lessons didn’t last. Loretta remembers taking piano lessons as a child at a Catholic school near her childhood home in the City of Dumaguete, on the island of Negros, in the central Philippines. There the nuns used a ruler to make sure she played the right notes. Ouch! Later, her high school choir, singing under the tutelage of Presbyterian missionaries, led her to join church and college choirs. And she danced! Elvis Presley’s rock ‘n’ roll dominated the music scene during Loretta’s teen years, but she also learned to square dance and, on occasion, performed native dances for international students at her university.
Loretta came to the U.S. at age 19 to begin her dietetic internship, working as a clinical dietitian at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, Mo. Later in her career, she became a hospital food service director and a consultant in morbid obesity for a private practice.
She met her husband of 45 years within a month of her arrival at Ohio State University, and marriage saw her raising four boys while working outside the home. Though the Toms had planned to return to and retire in Columbia, S.C., they had forgotten about the high humidity and palmetto bugs, otherwise known as roaches. Hence, their move to SaddleBrooke in 2004.
She can sing and dance!
Loretta stays busy! A member of the SilverBelles dance team, she will perform in SaddleBrooke’s 2023 Variety Show. A previous show found her onstage mimicking a cow during her Desert Chicks quartet parody performance of “Old McDonald Had a Farm.” The quartet enjoyed a big chuckle the time they were erroneously introduced as the Dixie Chicks.
Besides her dancing and volunteer work, Loretta rehearses and sings with the Catalina Chorus, Sonoran Singers, and her church choir. Mah Jongg with friends is on her weekly schedule. She also admits to feeding her addictions to reading and TV viewing of football, college volleyball, softball, and tennis.
She loves her activities and her surviving three very successful sons. Her boys, their wives, and her five grandchildren “have been the highlight of my life. I’m sure my husband is looking down from heaven and is as proud as could be of his family.”
For more information about the Singers, phone Claudia at 520-306-2113. Our website address is www.saddlebrookesingers.org.