Retrospect: Pennville woman performed for queen

Sixty-five years ago this week, a Pennville woman departed on the trip of a lifetime.

Mrs. Harold Hanlin, a member of the Penn Township Home Demonstration Club and a past president of the county Home Demonstration Clubs, was embarking on a six-week performance tour of Europe as one of the 47 members of the Indiana Home Demonstration Chorus.

Home Demonstration Clubs were a forerunner to today’s Extension Homemakers.

The chorus was accompanied on the tour by the 27-man Purdue University Glee Club. Plans called for the group to set sail June 13 on the S.S. Caronia for LeHavre, France, with daily rehearsals scheduled on shipboard.

Tour dates included performances in Paris, France; Rome, Italy; Lucerne, Switzerland; Nuremberg, Heidelberg and Frankfurt, German; Luxembourg; Brussels, Belgium; and London, England.

But the high point had to be a July 9 performance at the International Music Festival in Wales with Queen Elizabeth II in the audience.