RUSH: I gotta tell you a short little story. Kathryn and I went to Honolulu for Christmas. We were there at the same time Obama was, but there was no reason to be public about it this time. Nothing happened. But we went a little earlier than usual because Kathryn has a nephew who succeeded in getting into the Honolulu Boy Choir at age seven. This is unheard of. And the Honolulu Boy Choir, it’s a total volunteer organization, and they’re running around the whole island of Oahu doing Christmas concerts throughout December and so forth, and we wanted to get over there early enough ’cause Kathryn wanted to see him in a couple of ’em, and I went. One was Christmas morning at the Sheraton Waikiki in the lobby.
And I figured, okay, I’m just being a good husband here. I’m gonna troop down there Christmas morning, you know, watch some teenagers sing Christmas carols and score my points for the day and be free to watch football that night. And, I have to tell you, I was blown away. These are young boys, seven or eight years old, all the way up I think to mid-teens, but I was blown away by how professional they are and how great they are. And their conductor was a guy, Mr. Pelekai was his name, and this guy was awesome. These kids had been taught, these are ten, eleven year olds, who had been taught proper stage projection and enunciation when they were speaking and introducing songs and when they were singing.
I was blown away by it. Then when I found out that it’s obviously young kids, it’s an amateur organization, I wanted to give ’em a shout-out here because they were that good and this conductor, Mr. Pelekai, he’s a firemen, he donates his time to this. He could be, but he’s not a professional singing instructor or choral director or conductor or what have you. He does it in his own spare time. These are just fine and dandy, just cream of the crop young people. And you see instances like this, and you balance it against all the cultural rot you see elsewhere, and it just makes you feel good. It did me.
It’s Christmas morning and these kids are out singing the Christmas carols and attracting crowds of hundreds of people walking through. The K-State basketball team was coming back from a basketball game, it was Christmas Day. Of course everybody plays sports on TV for ESPN now. So these K-State behemoth basketball players are walking through the lobby and they stopped to watch what was going on. The kids did about 45 minutes, and they’re kids. It’s a tuition-free program. It’s an honor to be admitted into this choir, and Kathryn’s nephew is, what is it, my nephew three times removed? Who knows. I call him my nephew. But it was really cool.
I had a chance to meet Mr. Pelekai, who’s a fireman, and I made a point to tell him how he’s teaching these kids to be professionals. There’s a way to sing and project on stage. You don’t go on stage with a microphone, “Aloha!” It’s, “Alo-ha!” You extend it, there’s a way of stage speaking and singing, and these ten-year-old kids have been taught it. I thought I was watching a group of people far more trained and professional than ten year olds because Mr. Pelekai was — and everybody — he wasn’t the only one, there was an executive director and so forth, but I just think people like that deserve a shout-out. They’re doing the Lord’s work. These kids could be doing a whole lot of other things, but this is good for ’em and it’s a talent they have that he’s helping to develop and so forth. It was all good. It’s their version of being in Little League baseball and their version of being on a team. It was great to see.