The year was 1996. Tampa was the host city for the largest to date convention at Tampa Convention Center, the  “GALA Choruses Festival V”. http://galachoruses.org/about/history There were 86 choruses, 23 small ensembles and more than 4,700 singing delegates registered from around the world. Again, this was the largest convention Tampa had ever seen. The Hillsborough County Commission and Tampa City Council fought for this convention and had passed sexual orientation rights in the city and county but the county was wavering!

      We were proud to be the hosts for the OK Gay Men’s Chorus with friend/ director Rev. Franklin Roberts from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. We said that the 40 singers and back up band had to sing for their supper! In our back yard we had cooked a huge Cuban Tampa Feast of BBQ Roast Pork, Seafood Paella, black beans, yellow rice, Cuban bread & plantains.

     After the Festive dinner the group serenaded us and 100 of our close friends  in our back yard to a full monumental concert.  Of course we had invited all our neighbors too. The Oklahoma Cowboys had also brought with then a couple of their friends. The friends turned out to be none other than the outlandish Gay comedy singing duo, Romanovsky and Phillips.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanovsky_and_Phillips We had all of their CDs.

    They did a surprise set also to add to the beautiful Tampa night surrey! The guys were the headliners for the big Pride Show the next day!!!

    Tampa had a major Gay Pride event with all the visiting choruses marching in the Tampa Pride Parade. It was like no other Tampa Gay event since.

    A few days after the Festival V had finished in Tampa came some very sad news. The men’s chorus from France left JFK in New York on Flight TWA 800 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_800 . 12 minutes after take off the plane blew up and sank in the Atlantic Ocean. All 230 onboard were killed. This was at the time, the 3rd deadliest airline crash in America.