Westport has plenty: Great schools. Nice beaches. Restaurants up the wazoo.
But we don’t have a song.
On Sunday, June 14 that will change.
Suzanne Sherman Propp
“In Wonderful Westport” premieres that day, courtesy of Green’s Farms School music teacher Suzanne Propp and her gang of 2nd graders. They’ll sing the tune as part of the Westport Historical Society’s 18th Annual Hidden Garden Tour and Garden Marketplace, across from Town Hall.
Propp and colleague Cheryl Buck were teaching their students songs like “Downtown” and “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” When it came to the suburbs, all they found was teenage angst.
Propp and Buck asked the kids to brainstorm about Westport. They shouted out icons like the Minuteman statue, Compo cannons and Westport Country Playhouse.
Teachers and students collaborated on a song that also included famous families, like Bedford, Burr, Coley and Sturges. Rhyming them all was not easy, but then again those names have never been in a song before. It’s the thought that counts.
The song begins: “There are thousands of stories in Westport/ Here by the shores of the Long Island Sound/ Where the Saugatuck River is flowing/ Can’t imagine a much nicer town.”
Okay, it’s not “New York, New York,” “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” or even “Galveston.”
We don’t have Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett or Glen Campbell.
We’ve got something better: Suzanne Sherman Propp.
(Suzanne Sherman Propp’s new children’s CD, “Play,” is available at www.suzanneshermanpropp.com, on iTunes, and at Westport’s Barnes & Noble.)
This is not the first time Suzanne has so graciously included and encouraged her students in the exciting job of “creating”music. She’s one of our school’s treasures!
THANK YOU, DAN! (And Anne, too). Hope to see you all at the Westport Historical Society on June 14th. 🙂
Didn’t there used to be a song, “Westport has it all”?
Wow — good call. That’s rattling around in the back of my brain now. Was it from a video? Anyone remember?