Story, photos and videos by Beth Donze
(Click here for gallery)

Whenever the nostalgic strains of “  Take Me Home, Country Roads” make their way to Kathy Posey’s fourth-floor bedroom, she turns down the volume of her favorite Sunday-night TV show, “Call the Midwife,” and jets to her window to listen and clap.
    
Every Sunday evening since March 29, a group of six to eight volunteers – who call themselves “Operation Uplift” – have been singing for Posey and her fellow residents of Mater Dolorosa Apartments, a Christopher Homes property adjacent to the eponymous New Orleans church on South Carrollton Avenue.
    
“If I know the songs I try to sing along with them,” said Posey, 69, noting how the group’s performances offer a welcome break from the drudgery of being mostly homebound since mid-March.
    
“It means a lot. It boosts my morale,” Posey said. “I want to say thank you, thank you, thank you!”
    
To entertain as many residents as possible on Sunday nights, the group’s guitarist Richard Bienvenu, along with walk-on harmonica player Adam Higgins, circle the complex to lead four sets of music of 15-20 minutes each. The fun begins at 6 p.m., on the Oak Street side of Mater Dolorosa’s campus.
    
After praying the Our Father with the residents, the volunteers launch right into the music –  belting out, often in exquisite harmony, five or six songs taken from various genres: “Americana” standards such as “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” “Home on the Range,” “Wabash Cannonball” and “America the Beautiful”; poignant modern classics like “Lean on Me” and “All You Need Is Love”; and spiritual touchstones, including “Amazing Grace” and “How Great Thou Art.”
    
The musical circuit around the 65-resident property, carved out of the classrooms of the former Mater Dolorosa School, takes about 90 minutes to complete.
   
“We also will sing ‘Happy Birthday’ if a resident has a birthday,” said Michael Butterworth, a member of Mater Dolorosa’s Knights of Columbus, the group’s self-professed “clumsy roadie,” who is an attorney by day. 
 
News shared from above
   
Also looming large in the group’s repertoire of more than two dozen songs are Louisiana favorites such as Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World,” “You Are My Sunshine,” “Iko, Iko” and “Jambalaya (on the Bayou).”
    
In the middle of the group’s May 3 set outside the apartments’ South Carrollton entrance, one resident waved a white handkerchief from her window, second-line style, to join the singers in a rollicking rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
    
The celebratory singing perfectly matched the woman’s joy.
    
“My son tested negative for the virus! He’s a longshoreman, so this means he can work!” the resident shouted to the singers below.
    
“You all inspire us so much!” responded Linden Uter, Mater Dolorosa Church’s choir director and cantor, who shares the group’s lead-singing duties with guitarist Bienvenu.
    
“You make us want to come back every Sunday! See you next week!” Uter said, waving.
 
A great idea marches on
    
An amplifier and microphone system ensure the singers and musicians can be heard as they perform at least 20 feet from property walls.
    
“We socially distance and Purell our hands after every move,” Butterworth said. “Because we cannot sing while wearing masks, we stay extra far apart – we do not cluster together like a regular band. We look more like the Saints’ defensive backfield than the Saints’ offensive line.”
    
Butterworth and Bienvenu, both members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, began singing for the city’s seniors in mid-March, when they joined the musical entertainment group at Lambeth House formed by Geary Mason, whose mother was living there in the most dire days of the pandemic.
    
“As conditions were improving at Lambeth House, we heard that our Mater Dolorosa Church Knights of Columbus council was looking for ways to help the residents at Mater Dolorosa Apartments,” Butterworth explained.
    
In “normal times,” about half of the residents attend Mass next door and are visited by Father Herbert Kiff, pastor. The Mater Dolorosa residents’ council coordinates with the church’s parish council and the Knights of Columbus to sell baked goods during festivals and Lenten fish fries, while Father Kiff organizes field trips for the residents.
    
“We enjoy the sing-along as much as the residents do, and also we appreciate their prayers and we ask them to pray for us on the outside,” Butterworth said.
    
“Dagianna Pertuit (property manager) and her staff are working hard to protect their flock, and to keep everybody healthy,” he added. “We think the residents and the staff of Christopher Homes apartments citywide – and all the senior centers in New Orleans – are the true heroes and ‘sheroes’ on the front lines of this fight against the virus. We are honored to be able to entertain them and hopefully to lift their spirits a little bit.”
    
Butterworth said extra song sheets are always available to walk-ons, because nothing – not even a global health crisis – can take the music away.
    
“It’s like (Dr. Seuss’) Whos in Whoville after the Grinch stole everything they had, except he couldn’t steal the most important thing: their hearts and their voices,” Butterworth said. “When (the Whos) were beaten down, disappointed and had nothing left, they got together – likely at a safe social distance – and they sang!”

Beth Donze can be reached at bdonze@clarionherald.org.