Donny Osmond and Family in Pageant

Following are excerpts from an article found at: http://www.playbill.com/news/article/34552-Donny-Osmond-Sheds-Dreamcoat-To-Star-in-Mormon-Pageant-July-11-19 It was fun to have one of our "most famous Mormons" participate in pageant, and I remember the crowds being extra large that year!

"After selling out houses across the United States and Canada starring in the tour of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Donny Osmond has left the show in Toronto to join the cast of an upstate New York outdoor religious pageant, playing a prophet of the Mormon faith. He’s appearing as a prophet in the 60th annual Hill Cumorah Pageant, America's Witness To Christ, July11-12 and 15-19 (1997) in Palmyra, NY (near Rochester).

" “The whole family’s in the pageant,” said Osmond. “It’s something Debbie and I wanted to do with the family for a long time. I’ve seen the pageant a couple of times and was really quite moved by the spirituality of what I experienced. I wanted to be a part of it. It's not a career move, but a wonderful opportunity for a vacation with the family.” Osmond said that as much as he loves what he does, “being a father always comes before anything else. I especially wanted the summer off to spend time with Don, who’s 18 and graduated from high school in May. He’ll be heading to college soon, so this may be my last opportunity for quality time with him. He’s going to study theatre, but he’s more interested in the technical aspects. He’ll have to do a little theatre to understand how that all works. His appearance in the pageant is his stage debut.”

"At a rehearsal Wednesday, July 9, the pageant which stresses realism backed by equal amounts of spectacle, the actors among the cast of 630 took Osmond at his word when he asked them -- much to the chagrin of overall production director Jerry Argetsinger -- not to hold back in a scene where they attack Samuel with spears"

“I was standing high atop this wall and I told everyone below, 'I want to make this look real!’ They threw the spears on cue and right at me! I ran like the dickens. Thankfully, I had on shoes with leather soles or I would have slipped. But, oh, man, one of the spears hit my right heel. If not for that shoe, I’d be in serious trouble right now. I mean, these are not prop spears. They are the real thing. With sharp points! ... Of their experience working together, Osmond said, “This has already been fulfilling. So many great things have happened to us here as a family and it’s terrific that we could go through them together.”

The Music of Cumorah

Click here to read: "The Delights of Making Cumorah's Music" by Dr. Crawford Gates

This is a marvelous article written by Brother Crawford Gates, who composed the beautiful musical score which so wonderfully sets the mood for the Hill Cumorah Pageant.

For anyone who has ever been involved in pageant, seen the pageant, or even heard of the pageant, reading this inspirational story can only add to the awe and power that you feel when hearing the music.

I love the change in atmosphere in my home, the change of attitude in my children, and the feeling of happy reverence in my heart that comes with listening to this beautiful music.

Thank you Brother Gates, for all that you have done for the Hill Cumorah Pageant, most of which we will probably never be able to begin to understand.

Missionary Inspiration

In The Eyes Of A Future Missionary

Every summer, the Cincinnati Ohio Stake holds an annual youth conference. This is where the youth come together from the stake and either do a service project, or some sort of activity in the space of three days. This year, July 2011, we had the opportunity to have our Youth Conference in Palmyra, New York. At first, the leaders simply knew that we just didn't have the money to go to New York. We were going to just go to Kirtland, Ohio again. Through faith and prayer, our stake

was able to go to Palmyra. Our director, Sister Derenthal knew that that is where the Lord wanted us to go.

When I first heard we were going to Palmyra, New York for conference, I wasn't jumping for joy. I just recently graduated high school and I was done with stake activities. I have been to four conferences already. I had no desire to go. Something changed my decision. Some of the young women heard that I didn't want to go and weren't thrilled. They somehow managed to change my mind. Changing my decision and deciding to go would forever change my life. So I

turned my papers in and was ready for conference!

Once we arrived in New York, we settled in our dorms and unpacked our bags. I kept telling myself that I would rather be at home watching football or sleeping. I was not in the right mindset once things got rolling. I just had this complete

negative attitude about the whole trip. I heard we were going on some tours to see historical church sites, and I was not excited. With this, I decided to stop and contemplate. The only thing I could think of was my brother David. He would not of been very proud of my actions. I couldn't do this to not only him, but to myself. So I kneeled down in prayer. I prayed for a whole new attitude and a chance to make a change. After the prayer, I felt a sense of relief and smiled. I was ready for whatever was ahead of me that day.

After getting a tour of the Visitors' Center, my group (the stake was divided into groups of 25) was taken into the chapel. When I walked through the doors of the chapel, I saw my first sister missionary. My heart dropped. I said to myself: "Oh great, a sister missionary. Let's see what she's made of." Once she spoke about the chapel and gave her testimony, I was speechless. She blew me away. All I could do at that point was listen. Flashbacks were running through my mind about how as a child all I wanted to be was a sister missionary. This sister missionary just reminded me of why sister missionaries are important and amazing. My mood just hit a 360, and I couldn't help but to smile. Afterwards, my friend Sarah Biery and I had the opportunity to take a picture with her. I later learned that her name was Sister Thomas.

As time went on, sister missionaries just kept coming. They were all over the place! There were so many! I was even tempted to look in a garbage can to see if one would pop out. Each sister missionary was unique and loving. They all gave wonderful testimonies and you could see that they were true representatives of the Lord. I can't thank them enough for their examples and reminding me of why going on a mission really is an amazing opportunity. They are strong and righteous women that are being blessed by the Lord through teaching His gospel.

At the pageant, it was a whole new ball game. There were thousands of people all around me. It was a good thing that my whole group wore our blue conference shirts because I wouldn't of been able to find anyone. Once we arrived, I immediately went around to find the sister missionaries. First I had to get a drink, because I was thirtsy. When walking toward the concession stand, we saw Sister Thomas! Again, first one I met, first one we saw at the pageant. Pretty awesome. Afterwards, we decided to find another sister missionary named Sister Crook. She was nowhere to be found. We looked all over the place for about an hour. I was getting restless. We started chanting her name:"Sister Crook! Sister Crook!" People looked at us crazy. At the very last moment, Sarah yelled:"There she is!" We ran like crazy toward her. I was angry and relieved at the same time. Then it was time to watch the pageant. The pageant was unbelievable. The Book Of Mormon stories came to life. I got goosebumps watching. The spirit was so strong. The effects were beyond amazing and so detailed. Everything was on point and accurate. I couldn't of asked for a better show. The hard work and time payed off. Leaving the pageant, I felt renewed and energized. I had a different outlook on the Book of Mormon and gained a stronger testimony of the Book of Mormon. It is the word of God and can change your life if you read it and ponder it.

If I chose not to go to Palmyra, New York, I would of never of met the sister missionaries. After the conference, I became more humble than ever before. I had a new look on life. Saying I have been changed is an understatement. I have been transformed into something greater, This experience will be one that I will remember forever. I am preparing now physically, mentally, and most of all, spiritually for my mission. Once I hit the MTC, my whole world will change. I will have the opportunity to participate in the Lord's work. There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about when I first stepped into the chapel and met Sister Thomas.

December 1977 Ensign Article

A great article sharing some of the history of the Hill Cumorah Pageant

Palmyra: A Look at 40 Years of Pageant

By Gerald Argetsinger

Dr. Jack Paul Sederholm has been called by the First Presidency to direct the Hill Cumorah Pageant, “America’s Witness for Christ.” Brother Sederholm has assisted Dr. Harold I. Hansen for the last twelve of Hansen’s forty years as pageant director.
The new director will continue to serve as chairman of the Communication Arts Department at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Speech and Dramatic Arts from BYU, and in 1976 directed the “This Land of Liberty” pageant for the Potomac and Capitol regions of the Church in Washington, D.C.
With one stage, a hundred actors, and two readers, the Hill Cumorah Pageant in 1937, then only one year old, seemed like a large enough undertaking. Harold I. Hansen was a missionary at the time, “drafted” into directing the production because no one else had his experience in theatre. Now, forty years later, as he retires from his position as pageant director, the show is almost unrecognizable: an incredible twenty-five stages with six hundred actors; a five-track stereo sound system with original music by Crawford Gates; and perhaps the world’s finest outdoor lighting system.
Hundreds of thousands of visitors have seen the pageant during Hansen’s forty years as director. In a recent interview he reminisced about the early years. When he entered the mission field in July 1937 he was told that all the missionaries in his mission were going to take part in a pageant at the Hill Cumorah. They would invite people to come during the proselyting day, and spend their nights in rehearsal.
“When I arrived,” explained Brother Hansen, “they had a script, but no one had addressed themselves to the problems of production.” How would they light the stage? Where would the actors be? How would the audiences hear what was being said?
“The mission president tried to get me interested in the script,” Hansen continued, “because of my background in theatre. But I didn’t know anything about pageantry. Besides, I came on my mission to tract and to do the other things that missionaries do!”
But he was persuaded to direct one short scene. It took him only fifteen minutes to stage it and when the elders in charge of the pageant saw it, they handed him the script and told him thathe was directing the pageant. And he has continued for forty years, as a Church calling, until his recent release.
Brother Hansen notes that the biggest change in the production over the years has been in the attitude of the nonmembers in the area. In 1937 there was some open prejudice against the missionaries and the pageant. Now the attitude toward the Church and the pageant is very positive. Just before the 1977 opening the local Rotary Club gave Brother Hansen an award for outstanding service to the region. President Ezra Taft Benson of the Council of the Twelve accepted the club’s invitation to address them and present the award to Brother Hansen.
Local residents have been kind to the pageant participants, too. Once in the early years of production there was an overabundance of rain—but people still flocked to see the show. The parking lots became mires, and Hansen recalls, “I could actually see the cars sinking into the mud. All I could think about was the terrible mess we would have when it came time for the audience to go home.”
But ten minutes before the end of the pageant, Brother Hansen began to hear the sputter of engines—local farmers were chugging into the parking lots with tractors. They pulled every car out and put them on the highway without accepting a cent in payment. “Kindnesses like that can never be forgotten or repaid,” says Brother Hansen.
Another year, a drought had dried up all the wells and springs that the pageant used to supply water for the water curtain effects. Farmers in the area were even hauling water for their cattle. Yet just before the pageant opened, without any advance notice, the farmers appeared with wagonloads of water and filled the pageant holding tanks. The who went on—with the water curtains.
Harold I. Hansen, a faculty member and former drama department chairman at BYU, looks forward to returning to the pageant as an audience member in coming years to enjoy its growth. For he does believe that the pageant must continue to change. “I can’t imagine anything worse,” he says emphatically, “than if I came back and it looked the same as when I left.”
Though Hansen has accomplished many other things in his long professional life, the Hill Cumorah Pageant has been a major influence on his life and the life of his family. “It has dominated our whole home for all these years. If I hadn’t believed in it, I would never have done it. But I did believe in it, and I kept at it until the Brethren said, ‘You are released.’”
Now there are several pageants in many different places in the Church—but all owe a great debt to Harold Hansen’s exemplary production at the Hill Cumorah.

Boy Scout remembers visit to the 1937 Hill Cumorah Pageant en route to BSA National Jamboree

John O. Anderson’s Hill Cumorah Experience in 1937

In the summer of 1937, the Ogden and Salt Lake Area Councils of the Boy Scouts of America headed off for adventure: the first National Boy Scout Jamboree, to be held in Washington, DC. Brother John O. Anderson, then a 14-year old Scout, recalls “We were gone about 3 weeks, travelling in railroad passenger cars…We went to Chicago, Detroit, Palmyra, Albany, then Boston, New York and Washington, D.C. Going home we went through St. Louis. Anyway, at some point, we ended up in Palmyra and saw the Pageant.” “The Pageant” was the first of the Hill Cumorah Pageants, now one of the largest outdoor pageants in the world. Following are a few of Brother Anderson’s memories of that first one:

“The stage was at the bottom of the Hill and all of the Scouts just sat on the grass on the hillside of Cumorah. I can’t remember whether there was more than one night of the Pageant. Probably there was. I don’t know. I don’t know if all of the Scouts were there at the same time. We sat on the grass on the hillside and we covered the hillside. I still remember the warriors coming out with the trumpets and so forth. I remember colorful warriors off to one side. I don’t know if they blew trumpets or if the soundtrack had trumpets. It seems to me that they came out on the right side as I looked down from the hill. I don’t remember anything else regarding the staging. That was a long time ago.

“Of course we had time to go to the Sacred Grove and the Joseph Smith home and other historic places. I saw a missionary there from Tremonton—Porter Giles. We had read about this, and now we were here. I could just witness his father saying by the fence for Joseph to go home. The thing that was interesting to me, at least, was that a lot of Boy Scouts were running around there. But I especially remember how a bunch of rather noisy Scouts became quiet at the Sacred Grove, without anyone telling us. When we walked into the woods, the entire feeling… the whole situation changed, in terms of the fact that it was just different. The atmosphere changed. People weren’t shouting. It impressed me that everyone was quiet—it was just sacred.

“I was just kind of in awe of the whole thing. I was just 14, and I couldn’t fight, bleed, and die for it [like in the Pageant] and I was no Book of Mormon scholar, but I remember it was a good thing for us to see.”

Brother Anderson went from Palmyra on to the Jamboree, and then back to Tremonton, Utah. As he said, "Obviously, for a person from Tremonton, this was the adventure of a lifetime." During the Pageant and Jamboree, he could not have known that he would live to travel around the world four times, raise his children in Southern Illinois with a two-year stint in Kathmandu, Nepal, pioneer efforts in rebuilding Nauvoo, become a District President, Stake President, Stake Patriarch and serve two missions with his sweetheart, Verna Meyer Anderson. But, looking back, Brother Anderson wonders how much the trip to the Jamboree and the Hill Cumorah contributed to his ability to have the confidence to leave home and live elsewhere. If nothing else, it was a testimony-builder; like so many others who have and will continue to see and participate in the Pageant and visit the Sacred Grove, Brother Anderson was changed and grew in the knowledge of the truthfulness of the Restoration. While the sets and staging have changed over the last 75 years of the performance, many others still leave with that same almost indescribable feeling of awe, but with the sure knowledge that “it was a good thing for us to see.”

Story given to his daughter, Cathy A. Merrill, in September 2011

"Nightline" News Visits the Pageant!

Submitted by Current Hill Cumorah Pageant President Dwight Schwendiman:

2007 was a special year. It was our 2nd year as a pageant presidency. We had successfully completed one year and felt we now knew what we needed to do. Our Public Affairs committee consisted of Jeff Sykes (Rochester Stake), Toi Clawson (Palmyra Stake) and Phil Huller (Syracuse Stake). With all we needed done they were stretched.

Then because Mitt Romney was running for president, the ABC News Nightline producer called and asked if they could do a story on the pageant. Jeff spent most of the day trying to get everything worked out. His biggest challenge was finding the right person in the missionary department at church headquarters who would sign off for the church giving permission for the news crew to do the story. Brother Hawkins of the missionary department sent us a contract for ABC to sign binding them to follow church standards, etc. while on church property. Finally we were able to get to the right level of management in church headquarters to also sign the contract.

That night when the camera crew and reporter came to the pageant we had a very small crowd (less than 2000 people) in attendance because we had had a light rain during the afternoon and all evening. But this actually worked in our favor because the people from Nightline were amazed that the audience came and remained through the whole show.

John Starrs who played King Noah, Debb Steele who was costume mistress, and Sarah Stankiewicz (YSA from Pennsylvania) were interviewed extensively. As part of the agreement, we allowed the Nightline crew to film the entire show. We had never done that before. So there were a number of things that we were a bit nervous about, but we felt the opportunity this provided far out weighed our concerns.

The camera crew came to film the closing post show devotional. We had normally given cast members the opportunity in this devotional to tell of their proselyting experiences. Because the camera crew was present we decided not to do that, but instead invited Sister Kathleen Cook, wife of the area Seventy responsible for the pageant to come and bear her testimony. Before the devotional was over the reporter and camera crew packed up and left the study shelter. They were maybe 30 feet down the walkway when we asked the cast and staff to stand and sing The Song of Cumorah. The noise of all the chairs being moved as everyone stood up caused the camera crew to return to the study shelter. What they filmed actually became the end of the Nightline story.

Then the waiting began. I became worried because NBC news did another story by the same reporter on the Manti pageant. His emphasis there was on the protestors of that pageant. I worried what our story would be because in essence we had given him the keys to the house and gave him free access to everything. The story could have been devastating. In the end both the pageant and the church were shown in a very positive light.

The story is about 10 minutes long if you would like to watch:

(If you can't see the video box, please click on the name of this article, "Nightline" News Visits the Pageant" above, and scroll down)

Schwendiman Family 1977

Our first pageant experience after moving to Rochester was in July 1977. We had three small children under 6 years of age.

On the night we planned to go to pageant we experienced a horrendous downpour. I got soaked just getting the children into the car. I said to Marlene that with this rain we weren't going to go. She had much greater faith than I did and said that we were going because the rain would stop and the pageant would go on. The pageant was never rained out. So we went.

I kept saying under my breath that this was ridiculous and we should go home. And Marlene kept saying to keep driving because the rain would stop and the show would go on.

The rain was so bad that when we hit one puddle on the expressway the water spray was sufficient to kill the motor. We were able to coast to stop under the only overpass on that stretch of road. Now I was convinced we should quit and go home if we ever got the motor started again. But once started we continued on driving on Marlene's faith and inspite of my "better" judgement.

Surprisingly to me, the closer we got to Palmyra the lighter the rain was. When we got to the Hill Cumorah it was still raining a bit but definitely not enough to stop the show.

In 1977 highway 21 went straight past the hill through what is now the visitor center parking lot. The bowl we enjoy today had not yet been built. So we pulled into the parking lot across highway 21 from the hill and parked the car along the fence. We decided we would watch the pageant from the car in the parking lot rather than getting out in the rain and getting wet.

And the show went on proving Marlene's faith and causing me to admit I was wrong.

The pageant in 1977 included the story of Ammon saving the flocks of King Lamoni and then converting the King. The actor portraying Ammon would stand at the bottom of the hill and the robbers would come running straight down the hill to fight Ammon. Just before this scene the decision was made that the hillside was too slippery and they didn't want any of the missionaries playing the robbers to break an ankle or a leg while running down that very wet hill. So just before the Ammon scene which was about halfway through the show the ended the show. So in the end I was justified in my lack of faith. But I did mostly have to admit that Marlene was right. The show did go on.

Submitted by Dwight Schwendiman
Rochester, NY

Share Your Pageant Story!

Hello friends!

As we continue to prepare for the 75th production of the Hill Cumorah Pageant, we would like to invite you to share your pageant story! Many of us have had experiences that have uplifted us and built our testimonies. As we share them we can continue the missionary work that we started at the hill.

To do this, we ask you to e-mail your stories and accompanying pictures to:

hcp75th@gmail.com

After we have received your submission we will do any necessary edits, email them back to you for an OK and will post.

Thank you for Sharing!

Welcome to the Celebration!

Welcome to the 75th Anniversary Celebration Blog for the Hill Cumorah Pageant!

The goal for this blog is to share stories of Pageant experiences, and to invite others to come and enjoy the 75th Anniversary Celebration. We hope to gather and share pictures and memories from those who have participated in or attended the pageant in previous years.