In December, the Women's Chamber Choir took time from their busy schedule to give a performance for Fanatasy Flight, a program for terminally ill children and their families held at the Dulles International Airport. Stephanie Anderson, a sophomore in the Women's Chamber Choir, recalls the event-
Over the past few years, Langley Women’s Chamber Choir has performed at the Fantasy Flight, an event that Dulles Airport hosts for children who are terminally ill. The children who come to this event have less than a year to live due to their terminal illnesses. This year I was fortunate to experience the event first hand as part of Women’s Chamber Choir.
On the morning after the Madrigal Feaste, we all woke up early and got into our costumes not fully understanding what our day would be like and that we might be changing the lives of some children forever. When we got to the airport, we rode a shuttle from the parking lot with other people who were going to the Fantasy Flight event, so we decided to sing them a Christmas carol. We started singing “Away in a Manger” and all around us people start tearing up and crying. Going into the event, we knew that it must be a really hard time for the children, but we didn’t realize until that moment how much the parents were struggling with their feelings about their child’s illness.
When we got to the terminal, it was decorated to look like the North Pole. They even had a flight listed to the North Pole on the big departure screen at the front of the terminal! The plane actually took off from the airport, flew to West Virginia and came back for the first time because an anonymous donor paid for the fuel.
They had a stage area for us to sing and we stood in lines singing carols as the children walked off the plane. You couldn’t help but smile when you saw how happy these children were to be there. After we sang, there were some other groups that performed and during that time we got to talk and dance with the children, and make their time as enjoyable as possible. At the end, none of us wanted to leave. Those kids were just so sweet and it was hard to think that at this time next year, they would no longer be here and we wouldn’t see them again.
I’m so glad that we got to spend time with the kids and their families, and to make the hard times that they are going through just fade a little for a day.
