by Henry Leck, ICC Founder and Conductor Laureate

This is a story of the really, really, raw success of a guy named Matthew Truss. In the late 80s, there was a boy who heard about the Indianapolis Children’s Choir. He was recommended by his music teacher, but he was the kind of boy that didn’t have the support to get him to and from rehearsals. But he still wanted to sing so desperately.

I remember very distinctly that this boy would get on the bus and ride all the way to Butler University from East 38th Street. Because the bus schedules did not coincide with the start and end times of rehearsal, he would get here right after school in the afternoon. He would sit in the ICC office, and he’d do his homework and then go to rehearsal. Following that, he’d wait to get on the bus and ride all the way back to the East side of town.

After some years, I lost track of him, but I later learned that he ended up going to Broad Ripple High School and on to college. The next I heard of him, he was living in Boston and actually had become a professional singer. To this day, he lives in Boston and we’ve even invited him back to sing with the ICC on one of our anniversaries. He has an incredible voice and has made a great success of himself. His success was due to his enormous fortitude of overcoming those economic and geographic obstacles that allowed him to persevere and to succeed. It’s a great success story, wrought out of the worst of hardships.