Dr. Gerald and Geraldine Hubbell have been practicing their speech every day. On Friday during a luncheon of Sigma Alpha Iota’s 46th convention, held this year in Atlanta, the Lafayette couple will deliver that speech — “Music and Medicine: Prescription for a Healthy and Happy Marriage.” The Hubbells are this year’s convention honorees, a rare distinction for an international women’s music fraternity that meets only every three years.
“We were really shocked when they nominated us,” Geraldine admits. “But we’re thrilled — we thought we were getting an Emmy or an Oscar nomination.”
The former executive director of the Acadiana Symphony Orchestra for a decade, Geraldine is an accomplished, professional piano accompanist who has performed with violinists Endre Balogh, Eugene Fodor, Xiao Lu Li and Daniel Phillips; violist Gilad Karni, and singers Brian Schexnayder, Elizabeth Futral, Ruth Falcon, Brenda Boozer, Martha Ann Thigpen, Peter Lightfoot, Joseph Wolverton, Wanda Brister, Patricia Woodard, David Bernard, and Susan Straley. This fall she will accompany heralded Hungarian violinist Gyula Stuller for an ASO recital. She’s been active in SAI for more than a half century.
“The friendships have been amazing — our connections have been amazing,” Geraldine says of their affiliation with the fraternity.
Gerald eschewed a career in music — he studied bassoon — for a career in medicine and is affectionately known as “the humming doctor” by staff and patients at University Medical Center where he teaches. He was awarded the honorary title of Friend of the Arts by Sigma Alpha Iota 30 years ago and has attended conventions with Geraldine ever since, serving as the sound archivist — using a reel-to-reel tape recorder no less! — for SAI convention performances.
The Hubbells have been married for 53 years; their speech Friday will highlight a long marriage punctuated by music. As a couple they’ve been huge supporters of the arts in Lafayette for decades — especially music. Jokes Geraldine: “It’s not just a passion, it’s an illness.”
In rendering his ruling, District Judge John Trahan all but called the real estate developer a liar for inconsistencies in his accounts of what prompted him to punch a school teacher unconscious.
Frank’s Casing Crew, now doing business as Frank’s International, will make its final appearance on ABiz’s list of the Top 50 Privately Held Companies in Acadiana this year, and once again it will likely be at the top with more than $1 billion in annual revenues. The 75-year-old company specializing in tubular fabrication and installation services to the oil and gas industry plans to offer shares of its stock to the public for the first time.
The defeat, or rather highjacking of House Bill 420 in the final days of this year's Legislative Session, say Reps. Vincent Pierre and Terry Landry, is the result of the propaganda spread by one unidentified local media outlet and an unnamed former state Representative, but nothing to do with the original legislation's lack of checks, balances or details.
City-Parish Council Chairman Brandon Shelvin heaped steady doses of condescending ire on a Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Louisiana executive while failing to reveal his financial ties to a BC/BS rival.
Abbeville native David Primeaux was a popular professor until his death late last year, and while he was successful at camouflaging a dark past, he couldn’t outlive it.
Tehmi Chassion’s failure to recuse himself in the school board’s selection of a group health benefits provider raises ‘serious questions’ on whether he violated state ethics law.
He’s a singer. A songwriter. A piano man. A family man. He’s even got his own Wikipedia entry. He’s David Egan. And he knows ancient secrets about the monolithic stones of Stonehenge that he’s not willing to share.
“We were really shocked when they nominated us,” Geraldine admits. “But we’re thrilled — we thought we were getting an Emmy or an Oscar nomination.”
Subscribe to this comment's feed