News
Roosevelt High School Earns Top Honors During 40th Annual Northwest Orchestra Festival
Abdul-Alim (violin), Bronwyn Early
(violin), Amy Dong (viola), Nick
Loucks (cello) and Will Langlie-
Miletich (bass), performed Dvorak’s
Bass Quintet.
Musical groups from Seattle’s
Roosevelt High School took top
honors Saturday in three divisions at
the
40th
Annual
Northwest
Orchestra Festival hosted by Mount
Hood
Community
College.
Roosevelt was recognized for
outstanding performances in the
Small Ensemble Division, the String
Symphony Division and the Large
Orchestra Division. The orchestras,
under the direction of Anna
Edwards, involve more than 90
students in grades 9-12. The groups
performed works by Ludvig von
Beethoven, Antonin Dvorak and
Joseph Suk.
Throughout the daylong festival,
Roosevelt musicians turned in
outstanding performances. Omari
Abdul-Alim
(violin,
pictured)
performed a dynamic solo in Suk’s
Serenade for Strings and freshman
violinist
Josephine
Cheung
impressed the judges with her solo in
the
freshman
orchestra’s
performance of Vivaldi’s L’estro
Armonico. Concertmistress Bronwyn
Early and flute soloist Evan Pengra-
Sult provided key leadership and
outstanding performances for the
Symphony Orchestra.
Court: TV Anchor Can
Keep MLK Papers
By Holbrooke Mohr
The Associated Press
JACKSON, Miss (AP) — A Mississippi
television anchorman can keep documents
and other materials tied to the Rev. Martin
Luther King Jr., that the civil rights leader’s
estate sued to obtain, a federal appeals court
panel ruled Friday.
King’s estate sued WLBT-TV’s Howard
Ballou in September 2011 in U.S. District
Court in Jackson. The estate wanted posses-
sion of documents, photographs and other
items that Ballou’s mother got while work-
ing for King.
Maude Ballou worked as King’s secretary
Pull Quote
goes here
from 1955 to 1960 and kept documents dur-
ing the time King led the Montgomery
Improvement Association and the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference, the law-
suit said.
Maude Ballou said King gave her the
material.
U.S. District Judge Tom Lee dismissed
the estate’s lawsuit on March 23, saying
there was nothing to contradict Maude Bal-
lou’s testimony that King gave her the mate-
rial and that the statute of limitations had
passed.
A three-judge panel from the 5th U.S. Cir-
cuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans
upheld the decision Friday based on the
statute of limitations ruling.
The panel said the clock started when
Maude Ballou left King’s employment in
1960, not when the estate asked Howard
Ballou for the material in 2010. The estate
said it didn’t know about the material until
a newspaper wrote about that year.
“Thank God justice prevailed,’’ Howard
Ballou said Friday in a telephone interview.
“I’m just happy for my mother.’’
King’s estate, a Georgia corporation oper-
ated as a private company by his children, is
known to fight for control of the King brand
and has sued media companies that used his
“I Have a Dream’’ speech.
One of the estate’s attorneys did not
immediately respond to a request for com-
ment Friday. It wasn’t immediately clear if
the estate planned to ask for a rehearing or
appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The documents described in court records
include a sermon; a statement King made
the day after a landmark Supreme Court rul-
ing on segregation; and a
handwritten letter to Ballou’s
mother from civil rights icon
Rosa Parks.
After working for King,
Ballou’s parents went to work
at what is now Elizabeth City
State University in North
Carolina, where Leonard Bal-
lou was as an archivist.
Leonard Ballou apparently
stored the material in the university’s base-
ment, unbeknownst to anyone, until it was
discovered by the university in 2007 and
returned to the Ballou family.
The court record says the university con-
tacted Howard Ballou about taking posses-
sion of the material because his father was
deceased. His mother is alive.
Ballou’s lawyer, Robert Gibbs, said Bal-
lou’s parents were personal friends of King
and the letters, photographs and other items
were gifts that rightfully belong to Ballou’s
family.
Gibbs said Friday that the 5th Circuit rul-
ing clears up any issue of ownership, but
he’s prepared to fight if the King estate
appeals the ruling.
The 5th Circuit panel “decided the statute
of limitations issue, which does clear up the
ownership issue, because the ownership
claims they were making should have been
made a long time ago,’’ Gibbs said.
Page 6 The Seattle Skanner March 13, 2013
The Roosevelt Quintet took top
honors in the small ensemble
category against stiff competition
from as far away as Boise, Idaho.
The ensemble, comprised of Omari
In an unusual twist, the Roosevelt
Symphony Orchestra performed in
the finals competition under the
baton of a student conductor.
Director Edwards explained to the
audience that a family emergency
– the death of her father – had
caused her to miss 10 days of
school in the weeks leading up to
the festival. Edwards commended
the musicians for their hard work in
her absence, and in recognition of
that dedication, invited student
conductor — bassist Will Langlie-
Miletich — to conduct the orchestra
in its final performance of the fourth
Movement of Beethoven’s 5th
Symphony.
The
Roosevelt
performance took top honors,
Kamiak High School from Mukilteo,
Wash. placed second and Seattle’s
Garfield Symphony Orchestra was
third.
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