To the Editor:

This is a letter I wrote to the Guilderland School Board to object to the new policy that only eighth-graders involved in the Mask program will be able to see the high school musical:

This is an outrage to me that so many youths will not be exposed to the power that the arts can have on their lives.

I was a student at Farnsworth Middle School in the seventh grade the first year the school opened. I was not a great student. Classes like science and math were overwhelming for me. I daydreamed about being a dancer, a Broadway star, performing on a stage, and hearing the roar of applause. I was mesmerized by the June Taylor Dancers on the Jackie Gleason TV show, but nothing in school ever showed me a way to follow my dreams.

It wasn’t until eighth grade where a school bus picked us up at the middle school to see “Guys and Dolls” that I knew I may have a chance at living my dream. By ninth grade, I was too shy to audition, but was brought to the rehearsals to sign up for the stage makeup training for the production of “Damn Yankees.” I memorized every song and all of the lines of the play even though I stood backstage. It was magical.

By 10th grade, I was in detention, but by fate the teacher didn’t show up. However, as I was wandering through the halls, I could hear a girl singing on stage. In the hallway, I saw several nervous youths with wrinkled song sheets in their hands, waiting to audition. I started singing at the top of my lungs with a young lady, which was a complete distraction to Fred Heitkamp who came  barreling  through the doors to yell at the loud-mouthed girl for disrupting auditions. He told me to wait for my turn and then I could make all the noise I wanted.

Call it fate, call it destiny. I was a 15-year-old girl falling through the scholastic cracks of high school and found myself cast as a 9-year-old boy named Winthrop Paroo, in “The Music Man.” It was everything I ever dreamed of, including the following year where I was cast as a princess in “The King and I.”

Senior year came and the play would be “Annie Get Your Gun.” I practiced singing and reading the script until the wee hours of the morning in my small bedroom. What I would give to be the star. Auditions came and I fought fiercely for the lead role, I began to lose my voice, my knees were shaking so hard I could barely climb the stage for the audition. I wasn’t happy with my performance, but then again I always doubted myself.

The next day, the list was posted across from the library. I didn’t want to look, and my heart pounded as if I were awaiting a trial. Before I could even get close enough to the list to even read it, a fellow classmate turned to me and yelled, “Congratulations, Annie!”

And for once in my life I was somebody.

When my guidance counselor asked me what my college plans were, I told him my dream of being a singer, dancer, and actor. He looked at me with pity and said, “If you'd like a career in the entertainment industry, I suggest you apply to be a flight attendant.”  Wow.

When a fire burns in your heart and you see what possibilities life holds, nothing can stop you.

I scored an audition with Dick Clark’s American Bandstand and danced on national television weekly. By 1980, I applied for a job with Arthur Murray Dance Studio in Albany. I traveled all over the world, competing and training other dancers.

By the time I was 26, I bought the Albany franchise. I was the youngest woman in the history of the company to buy one on her own. I made well over six figures as a successful studio owner, and my wealth only began to grow larger every year. I sat on the board of directors as the only woman in the Arthur Murray International organization in  history to do so.

I started a ballroom dance team at RPI and taught over 1,000 kids a year, for 19 years, the joy of dance. Many went on to be champions and dance-business owners. In 1999, I opened another studio in Latham, purchased a 12,000-square-foot building, and turned it into a ballroom. After surviving a nasty bout with breast cancer, I opened another Arthur Murray Dance Studio in Saratoga Springs.

After retiring from a career that only dreams were made of, I opened a public relations agency that promotes musicians, actors, Broadway stars, and many dancers from the TV show “Dancing With The Stars.”

All of this came from one bus ride, one field trip, one fateful day when an unpopular, poor kid from Altamont saw that there was a place for people like me through the Guilderland Players. My life was changed forever, and I tell everyone it all started in eighth grade on that bus ride home from the musical.

Please consider changing your policy and allow all eighth-grade students to see what the arts can do for their lives. I could have fallen through the scholastic cracks but teachers like Fred Heitkamp and Agnes Armstrong believed in me when it seemed that no one else did.

I solemnly ask you to allow every eighth-grader a chance to see this show and maybe you will change their stars.

I am a living example of a successful artist, the outcome of which came from a field trip to see a musical performance.

Leslie LaGuardia

Guilderland Central High School

Class of 1976

Editor’s note: See related story.