Singing in Sounds Good’s Good Memories Choir is just one way Elspeth Revere and Bruce Calder continue to expand their skills, interests, and friendships.

As some of us age into our seventh and eighth decades, one wish that many of us share is that we’ve done something to make the world a better place. Among the Sounds Good choristers are many who can claim that distinction, none more so than Elspeth Revere and Bruce Calder, who sing with the Gold Coast Good Memories Choir.

Bruce is a historian, teacher, and the author of a scholarly book and many articles about the United States’ intervention in the Dominican Republic. Elspeth has been a leader and change-maker at some of Chicago’s premier civic and philanthropic organizations.

Together since 1976, Bruce and Elspeth have a child, Celia, who is to be married next month in the same house in Ravenswood that they bought for their own wedding in 1983. Bruce has two sons from a prior marriage, and four grandchildren. He was born in Chicago, but grew up in Des Moines and St. Louis. After graduating from Wesleyan University in Connecticut, he worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, living on the Lower East Side, at the time a “funky neighborhood,” Bruce recalls. “It was a completely different life experience for someone who hadn’t grown up in a big city. I loved it.” Impending parenthood caused him to give up his plan to join the Peace Corps, opting instead for graduate school to pursue his interest in foreign affairs. “I flipped a coin between Africa and Latin America, and Latin America won,” he says. He studied at the University of Texas, spending time in Guatemala while earning his master’s degree, then in the Dominican Republic for his Ph.D. After brief stints at the University of Rhode Island, the University of Indiana, and Northwestern University, he joined the faculty at the University of Illinois Chicago, teaching Latin American and Caribbean history until he retired in 2007. Bruce particularly enjoyed teaching undergraduates, many of whom were first-generation college students. Many Latino students learned about the history of their countries of origin in his classes.

His book, “The Impact of Intervention: The Dominican Republic During the U.S. Occupation of 1916-24,” is still in print after 40 years and earned praise in The New York Times as “a comprehensive and tolerant study, devoid of jargon.” It chronicles how the Dominican people, from peasants to elites, reacted to the takeover, which was intended to protect U.S. business and political interests in the region. As one of the first historians to take an in-depth look at the occupation, Bruce’s work had lasting impact. Elspeth proudly recalls attending a conference to which Bruce had been invited by the President of the Dominican Republic to give the keynote address. Arriving in Santo Domingo, they were surprised to see banners around the central city park displaying photographs from Bruce’s book.

Bruce Calder’s book on U.S. intervention in the Dominican Republic, as it was first published in 1984 and its current edition on Amazon.

“All of these young academics came up to him to tell him how much they had been inspired by his work,” Elspeth says. Here, Bruce interjects, “She’s describing this because I can’t always recall it. But I remember it once she says it.”

Elspeth grew up in New York City, but moved around a lot to various locations in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. After two years at St. John’s College she moved to Chicago and finished her undergraduate work at the University of Chicago. After working briefly as a paralegal (which caused her to abandon her plan to attend law school), she applied for a civil service job at the City of Chicago and was hired to work in neighborhood planning. It was there that Elspeth was introduced to the dynamics and tension at play when developers and bankers come up against residents and activists. Her biggest and most traditional planning project was working on the reuse of the old Chicago Tuberculosis Sanitarium. Built in 1915, the sanitarium was no longer in use in the 1970s. A developer had proposed building a shopping center on the 160-acre site at Bryn Mawr and Pulaski. A community group, the North River Commission, got wind of it and went to Mayor Richard J. Daley to register their objections. The mayor sent them to the planning commissioner. Elspeth recounts the dialogue: “They said, ‘We want senior housing, a park, a nature preserve, and we want the theater reopened.’ My boss and I were sent out to work on it.”

The entrance to the Chicago Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium in 1915. Later, it became the site for North Park Nature Preserve.

After developing a plan for the site, but before work started on it, Elspeth left the department to pursue a degree in planning at UIC. “And I never went back there until our child was invited to a birthday party at what is now known as North Park Village. When we got there, my jaw dropped. The place looked exactly like the brochure we had produced! Everything we had planned for, except the theater, was there.”

After completing her graduate work, Elspeth returned to city government as director of planning in the housing department. From there, she went to the Woodstock Institute as vice president, then president. Woodstock’s mission, broadly, is to advance economic justice and racial equity. “We did a study that showed that for every $10 in deposits banks got from minority communities they put just $1 back in loans,” Elspeth explains. “First Chicago [now Chase] Bank contacted us, and we negotiated a $100 million mortgage loan fund for minority neighborhoods. It was the biggest Community Reinvestment Act deal of the time.” Adopted in 1977, the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) combats the practice of “redlining,” by which the financial and real estate sectors created color-coded maps to identify areas they considered “risky,” most often minority neighborhoods.

In 1988, Elspeth left Woodstock to join Bruce in Guatemala, where he was doing research on the Catholic Church and its role in society and politics. Elspeth says she grew bored after a while and began working with a women’s weaving group and as a consultant for micro-enterprises. Returning to Chicago, she embarked on what would be a 25-year stint at the MacArthur Foundation, starting as a program officer and eventually becoming Vice President for Media, Culture and Special Initiatives. “I worked in areas as diverse as gun violence prevention, establishing the International Criminal Court, and providing operating support to over 300 arts organizations in Chicago,” she recalls. After leaving MacArthur, Elspeth found a new niche as an interim executive director, first with Kartemquin Films, then Facets Multimedia, the Chicago Cultural Alliance, the Evanston Community Foundation, and the Center for Neighborhood Technology. About those experiences she says, “I feel successful as an interim if I clean up the messes, make no decisions that tie the hands of the future executive director, and help find a good person for that job.”

Now, they are facing a new challenge together: accepting, but not giving in to, the memory loss Bruce is experiencing due to Alzheimer’s Disease. Singing is one way of enriching their lives, even at a time of loss.

Bruce and Elspeth heard about Sounds Good from their friend and fellow singer, Betsy Vandercook. After sitting in on a rehearsal with the Evanston choir, they thought it might be too challenging. But then came a phone call from Sandy Siegel Miller encouraging them to try Good Memories, and they soon joined. “You were all so welcoming,” Elspeth says. “And it’s great to have something fun we can do together.”

This pair of scholar-activists particularly appreciate Good Memories because it encourages people with early-stage memory loss to continue to expand their interests, friendships, and skills. Elspeth explains, “You get to be 83 (in Bruce’s case), and couple that with memory loss. People don’t invite you to try something new. Getting to do something new, being with people you didn’t know before is a very positive experience [in contrast to] being treated like a client who needs services. There are so many goals at work here [in Good Memories] and they’re not all going to apply to everybody, but it seems to be fun and rewarding for everybody. Does it matter which way it’s a good experience for Bruce and which way it’s a good experience for me? It’s good for both of us in different ways.”

Singing with the Good Memories Choir has added a new and happy dimension to their lives. “I just enjoy the singing. I hadn’t sung since grade school. It’s a therapeutic experience, and it’s fun,” says Bruce. “I don’t have a problem with memory in that area. I’ve just found it a joy.” Elspeth chimes in, “Bruce doesn’t read music, but he’s always been music oriented. I heard my first African music because of Bruce, and my first Irish/English folk music—and Latin American music, of course.” Although she played the oboe in her high school orchestra, Elspeth says that when they joined Good Memories, “I was confronting written music for the first time in 30 years. It was like a language I hadn’t spoken in all that time. It was exciting to see it again, but I had never translated music to my voice.” She describes her singing as below average: “I just want to get up to average.” To that end she is taking classes at the Old Town School of Folk Music.

Elspeth the change-maker has an idea for adding more meaning to the lives of people with memory loss. “I’d love for somebody to start a program where people with memory loss could volunteer to do work that’s important—maybe to help nonprofit organizations—accompanied by someone who understands memory loss who would make sure they can manage the environment. You want to have a sense of purpose no matter how old your are or how much memory you’ve lost.”