by Andrew Alonzo | aalonzo@claremont-courier.com

The voices of Claremont High School alumni will soon deliver a musically charged love letter to CHS’ Theatre Department’s first director, the late Don Frederick Fruechte, who died last month.

Alums from 1968 to 2020 will join forces from 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday, September 15 for “From Claremont to 42nd Street,” a benefit concert for the Don F. Fruechte Arts Fund, which provides financial assistance for CHS students to participate in the arts, at Scripps College’s Garrison Theater, 231 E. 10th St., Claremont. Tickets, $15 to $25, are available at eventbrite.com, search “Scripps Presents.”

The concert — two days after the CHS class of 1974’s 50-year reunion begins — will bring together alums to perform songs many of them once delivered at the CHS theater, which in 2013 was christened the Don F. Fruechte Theatre for the Performing Arts.

Performers include Donald Brinegar and David Lee from the class of 1968; Margie Boule, 1969; Brian Shyer and Robert Webb, 1970; Pam Dahl, 1971; Kathee Hennigan Bautista, Jack Davis, and Richard Stout, 1972; Randy Kovitz, 1973; Martha Boule Arneson and Shaelynn Richardson, 1974; Martin Howard and Kathy Kilsby, 1975; Martin Hewitt, 1976; Julie Waldman Stiel and Donna Jean Meyers, 1977; former CHS Theatre Director Krista Carson Elhai and Kevin Fortson, 1978; Frank Minano, 1980; Robin DeLano and Rebecca Whiteside, 1994; Amanda Colclough Gilette, 1999; Craig Colclough and Matt Lara, 2000; Carolina Garcia, 2003; and Jeff Deards and Julian Pielke Santos, alumni of the CHS class of 2020.

The director and producer of the event, 1974 CHS alum Michael Alden, will also take the stage.

Scripps College’s Garrison Theater will be the site of a September 15 concert to benefit the Don F. Fruechte Arts Fund, which provides financial assistance to CHS students to participate in the arts. Courier photo/Andrew Alonzo

Alden is one of many CHS alumni who participates in weekly Zoom calls with former hometown theater pals. During a 2023 call, someone suggested a legacy fund named after Fruechte be formed. The group worked with Claremont Educational Foundation to establish and launch the Don F. Fruechte Arts Fund in spring 2024, which helped send nine CHS students to the International Thespian Festival in Bloomington, Indiana as its first act of charity.

“It was very warm and wonderful for us because we got a video thank you from them that we were able to share with Mr. Fruechte, which he got to see before he passed away last month,” Alden said. “It’s very bittersweet that we were able to get the fund up and running and he knew about it. And I thought, well the next step would be to do something like a concert.”

Alden tapped his CHS theater connections, and their response confirmed widespread interest in the benefit production. Producers from Scripps Presents, the college’s public events series, later gave Alden their blessing and added it to its list of 2024-2025 programming.

Alden told Fruechte about the event prior to his death.

“I gave him the list of his students who were coming back, as I said as far back as 1968, and he just said ‘Michael Jay, I’m so very honored,’” Alden said. “And I said, ‘No, it is us who are honored sir.’”

Some of the alumni featured in the benefit forged careers in the entertainment industry. Alden, 68, is a Broadway producer. David Lee was an executive producer of the hit television series “Frasier,” and others; Randy Kovitz, an actor, filmmaker, fight director, and stunt coordinator, has a resume that includes stunts for the 1991 film adaptation of “The Addams Family,” and an acting credit on George Romero’s 1978 classic, “Dawn of the Dead”; and Caroline Garcia became the director of original series at Netflix, helping to produce shows such as “13 Reasons Why,” “Stranger Things,” and many others.

Kovitz will sing a medley from Alan Jay Lerner’s “My Fair Lady” at the event. Garcia will lend her voice for “It’s An Art” from Stephen Schwartz and Nina Faso’s 1977 musical, “Working.”

Though some pursued different paths, Alden said alumni returning for the concert cite CHS “as the place where they learned the value of art in education.”

“The reality is art in a child’s education is a vital component to them being able to participate in the world as a team player, a problem solver, and a direct communicator,” Alden said. “When we take that away, we groom followers.”

“It makes us human, “ Kovitz said. “If all you do is study skills and math and science and all that other stuff, you don’t connect with your soul, with your subconscious. Your subconscious is where creativity comes from … without that the world is a dark and dreary place and, I would say, a sadder place.”

“Theater was a really formative experience for me in high school and I want to be able to support and provide that for students today,” Garcia said.

Tickets to the 2 p.m., September 15 “From Claremont to 42nd Street,” begin at $15. Search “Scripps Presents” at eventbrite.com to RSVP. To learn more about The Don F. Fruechte Arts Fund, visit tinyurl.com/fruechtefund.