One Aurora Marine’s request that his mom send a guitar to him while he was posted in the Iraq desert resonated so deeply with other Colorado musicians that hundreds of guitars have been shipped — or soon will be — to waiting soldiers.
Old six-strings gathering dust in dormant family rooms have been spiffed up. New guitars are waiting.
In the new year, they’ll find their way to tents and barracks in faraway places, providing solace and creating community for musically inclined servicemen and women. The instruments may return stateside at the end of the soldier’s tour, or they may be left behind for the next group.
“If the guitars stay around, that’s kind of neat,” says Gordon Close, a lifelong guitarist whose Englewood shop, Elite Sound, is donating new guitars to troops. For every $100 contributed, he will send along two new Harvest guitars and gig bags, each worth about $300.
“Our point is, if there are guitar players, one who can play entertains 10 or 20 or 100 people, and it’s being shared by a lot of other people,” says Close, who grew up playing rock ‘n’ roll guitar in north Denver. “I love music and know it can really resolve a lot of issues. If we can get music back into the troops, maybe we can give people something do do besides play video games. And it’s a lot more interesting than sticking ear plugs in your ears and listening to an MP3 player.”
The idea that a serviceman’s life in the trenches could be made better by the addition of music is not new. Many a wartime tale has been told told of the lonely soldier providing solace for himself and his mates by playing the harmonica.
Guided by Edith LeMaster, whose son was the Marine who asked for an instrument, the Denver Musicians Association has been shepherding used guitars through repairs at Elite Sound and the Denver Folklore Center, and directing cash donations used by American Legion Post No. 1 to ship instruments. Musicians and music stores, like Flesher-Hinton, are in the game, too.
Cash donations have begun to flow in.
Close says one woman gave him $500 and then returned a month later with an additional $900. Some folks have donated in their friends’ names as a holiday gift, including a group of elementary school parents, who honored a singing fourth-grade teacher by sending a guitar.
“It’s apolitical,” Close says. “We have wonderful people over there representing us and we should take care of them. This is a good way to do it.”
Both Close and musicians union president Pete Vriesenga see potential for their work to ring out long and loud, first with U.S. service members and then with Iraqi citizens.
“When this clash winds down, there will be military hardware strewn across the desert,” Vriesenga says. “Wouldn’t it be great if that included 1,000 guitars?”
Dana Coffield: 303-954-1954 or dcoffield@denverpost.com
