About Ron
It’s 2003. The fluorescent lights in the Chestnut Ridge Elementary School cafetorium were on full blast. It was 3:00pm and that vague school lunch smell was wafting in from the kitchen in the back. Chairs had been set out in a semicircle, the piano from Mr. Cortese’s classroom had been wheeled in, and I was about to start rehearsals for Gilbert and Sullivan’s acclaimed(ish) operetta: The Gondoliers.
Yes, gentle reader, you read that right. The year was 2003. I was nine years old. I, alongside a handful of my fellow third and fourth graders, was cast as an ensemble member in our elementary school production of The Gondoliers. For the uninitiated, Gilbert and Sullivan’s operettas are primarily known for difficult-to-execute patter songs, heavy Victorian satire, wordy librettos, and creating the bridge between opera and what we know now as the modern musical.
I didn’t know any of these details on that fateful day in the cafetorium. All I knew was that this was the happiest day of my young life. My best friends were next to me, my teachers (they played the lead roles) were seated in community in front of me, and Ron Herman was leading our first rehearsal with deft ease. It was like a light came on that changed me forever. I had found my calling, my true love, my passion, and my purpose in learning what it means to gather people toward an audacious creative goal. Ron lit that spark for me and countless others through his passion and willingness to share it.
Looking back, I think Ron (he was Mr. Herman to us at this time, to be clear) was some kind of God or extraterrestrial. There is NO logical world where an entire school community of teachers, students, staff, parents, and administrators volunteer countless hours of their time in the name of presenting a polished Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. Volunteering to ensure kids like me had a costume to wear and were quiet(ish) backstage and had the right props. Props like the fake roses we swayed from side to side during the opening number “List and Learn,” where, during one rehearsal, Ron taught us all what it meant to be “so painfully flat.” Every moment was magical and surreal.
But it wasn’t magic and it wasn’t extraterrestrial activity. It was one man with an outsized ability to lead, bring people together, and show what was possible just by being his joyful self.
Two such aforementioned volunteers to The Gondoliers cause were my parents, Lori and Paul. It was the start of my mom’s stage mom era, helping at rehearsals and with costumes, and it was the start (and end) of my dad’s set building era. He was tasked (he tasked himself? details hazy) with building the ship that our Gondolieri enter and exit on throughout the show. It was a grand illusion: our backstage crew (literal children) pulled a rope and the ship floated from one side of the stage to the other. I remember him building it in our garage while my sister and I played with the Skip It and were generally unhelpful.
As a result, my parents ended up attending the “grown ups” cast party. From the lore that’s been passed down now that I myself am a grown up, it was quite the raucous affair. I believe it was my dad’s first meaningful interaction with an out gay man, and it changed him and some of his core beliefs. I have to believe that, just by living his life authentically, Ron changed the hearts and minds of many in our corner of the world in a messy, prejudiced, post-AIDS epidemic society.
I have flash memories of the ways Mr. Herman continued changing my life. Him calling the landline when I was in fifth grade to let my parents and I know that I had been cast in the children’s ensemble of Churchville-Chili High School’s production of Brigadoon. Him teaching us the maypole choreography he envisioned for the MacConnachy Square number. His soaring voice singing “Oh What a Beautiful Morning” through the aisles of the Hale Auditorium in Oklahoma a year after that. Then, 20 years later, a few weeks prior to my move to Philadelphia, sitting in his Park Avenue home with Kelly. Singing something from The Last Five Years as George played piano. I left early to go on a Tinder date (Ron approved).
Ron: you were a force larger than life itself and I regret not thanking you for the gift you gave me while I still could. The heartbeat of my life began with you and Mr. Cortese in the CRS cafetorium. The friendships that are still with me now, the music, the community you built, the passion, the dramatics. I am one of many. I spend my days now dancing around the maypole of life, trying not to disappoint the young girl you inspired. I love you. You’re part of me from this day on.
