Choir sings its thanks for refuge

QUINCY, Ill. — While the gratitude of their ancestors may have been soft-spoken, members of the 320-voice Mormon Tabernacle Choir joined their prophet here Saturday to declare their thanks in song to the descendants of early Quincy residents.

It was here in 1839 that some 5,000 early members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints came for refuge after being driven across the Mississippi River from Missouri by Gov. Lilburn Boggs' infamous "extermination order."

President Gordon B. Hinckley addressed a packed house of 2,000 in the Quincy Junior High School auditorium during a benefit performance by the choir, thanking the residents of what has grown to be a city of 40,000 for the kindness of their forefathers.

"In the annals of our church, this city and its citizens will always occupy a station of the highest esteem," he said midway through the choir's performance. "We will always be grateful for the kindness, hospitality and civility with which your people met our people who were exiles. The citizens here took them in and sheltered them from the winter that was all about them."

He announced the benefit performance had raised some $75,000. "I don't have the check with me. They already have it in the bank," he quipped to a round of applause.

Choir Director Craig Jessop said the benefit performance was first suggested by David Barnes of the church's travel department, who makes arrangements for choir members. When Barnes found out the entire choir would be traveling to Nauvoo and had a Friday night free, he suggested that Jessop contact Quincy officials to see if they would be interested in a performance.

The former director of the U.S. Air Force Band, Jessop said he then called friends with the Air Force performing groups to get a suggestion on whom to contact in Quincy. Mary Winters, assistant general manager of the Quincy Herald Whig, was "delighted" with Jessop's offer and set to work organizing the benefit performance, he said.

"We told her we wanted to give it as a free benefit concert and that they could designate the funds to whoever they would like. The choir is picking up all the expenses for the concert" including rental of the Quincy Junior High School auditorium, he said, thus leaving "every penny" of the proceeds to benefit the Quincy Area Community Foundation.