Howard Goodman
Palm Beach columnist

Voices soared, the piano jumped and 500 people swayed and clapped their hands.

It was a great afternoon in church.

There were whites and blacks, old people and young, Jews and Christians across denominations and one brave teenager from South Africa.

It was a concert, a prayer meeting, a fundraiser and a call for citizen action.

The event was called “Celebrating Life,” and it brought together lots of people who wouldn’t normally celebrate together.

“You had the lady from Palm Beach talking to the lady next to her, from Riviera Beach,” said the Rev. Linda Tarry-Chard, who created both the event and the foundation it benefited, “sitting in front of the lady from Singer Island, in back of the guy from Boynton Beach.”

The Florida Atlantic University Gospel Choir sang along with Ann Turnoff, a cantor from Boca Raton, and Diana Solomon-Glover, lead soloist at The Riverside Church in New York City.

They shook the Cason United Methodist Church in Delray Beach, a mostly white church with a black female pastor, the Rev. Sharon Austin, as if to straddle Swinton Avenue, the historic color line when Delray was a segregated city.

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PROJECT PEOPLE FOUNDATION launches Celebrating Life: Concert Series, a benefit to aid the women, children and youth in South Africa’s townships and build bridges across multi-cultural communities in the USA

Download the Press Release: Celebrating Life Inaugural Concert