The secret of growing old gracefully

Nancy Tracy has music in her heart, mind and soul.

The San Francisco-born retired teacher has lived in and around the

Newport Beach area for 40 years. She will be 80 this May, but she has

never stopped working with children, which keeps her young at heart.

Tracy joined the intergenerational choir, a choir comprised of

students from Harbor View School and seniors from the Oasis Senior

Center, which had its first performance at the center on Thursday.

The four senior ladies were joined by 17 young girls as they

combined the two themes of Valentine’s Day and President’s Day,

performing love and patriotic songs such as “You Are My Sunshine,”

“You’re a Grand Old Flag” and “America the Beautiful.”

Tracy sat down with the Daily Pilot’s Lindsay Sandham this week to

talk about her love of music and children, and of how putting the two

together has helped keep her feeling young.

So before you retired, you were a music teacher?

I was a kindergarten teacher and I based everything in my program

on music because I am a music major. I have my bachelor’s [degree] in

music. The children never knew that they were learning anything

because we were always singing and playing our instruments. There are

so many marvelous songs for getting language and concepts. I still do

it every Friday over at Shalimar Learning Center.

What exactly do you do at Shalimar?

On Friday, the children don’t have homework so they have special

people who come in to do special things for the children. I am the

music lady. I do seasonal songs -- right now we’ve been doing

Valentine’s and patriotic. Next we will start singing about

Springtime and Easter songs. It’s a wonderful program and I love

doing it and I have many instruments.

What do you like best about working with the young ladies in the

intergenerational chorus?

Of course, I love working with children. I love doing music. The

selection of songs that we did today were extra fun because I love

the patriotic songs and the Valentine’s songs.

It’s just been a real treat to be associated with this group.

They’re hoping we can get more people from Oasis to be involved

because there’s just the four of us right now. But to the children,

we’re just part of the group and they love having us and we love

being with them.

You seemed to be one of the more excited ladies on stage --

dancing and moving along with the music.

Well, that’s kind of the way I am; that’s my personality. I love

music and I love working with children, so it’s exciting.

Have you done programs like this before with other students?

No, this is our first time. Oasis advertised it in their

newsletter last month, and I happened to see it, and it said they

were trying to get an intergenerational choir going, and they didn’t

even know what school or how we were going to do it or anything. I

called and looked into it.

What’s your favorite song of all the songs in the performance

today?

Well it’s hard to say. There’s one song that I really enjoyed a

lot because it’s an old camp song that I never had remembered for

years and years and years until we started singing

Skin-a-ma-rink-a-dink-a-dink ... and then immediately I started

singing it over at Shalimar.

You seem like a very busy woman.

That’s kind of the secret of growing old gracefully -- working

with younger people. And keeping busy, giving of yourself. I look at

some of my peers who are just sitting around playing bridge all the

time, and I think, “What a boring life.” I couldn’t live like that.

What else do you do to keep yourself busy?

I belong to Philharmonic Women’s Committee Upper Bay. We are

giving a big luncheon to raise money for the philharmonic society. It

gives all of the money they raise from different fundraisers to put

on the programs at the Performing Arts Center.... I don’t have too

many spare minutes.