The Belangers brought warmth and soul to their Citrus Park home when they added a music room.
By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published October 3, 2003
[Times photo: Chris Zuppa]
Folk musicians Cheryl and Ray Belanger display some of their extensive collection of instruments in their Citrus Park home's music room. The Belangers host a monthly community "singing circle" that comprises about 20 people who gather to sing a variety of tunes.
CITRUS PARK - In the music room warmed by hardwood floors and a glimpse of sky and leafy oaks through the high windows, Cheryl and Ray Belanger sing the signature song their band is named for:
Simple Gifts.
Ray plays a 1918 Washburn guitar that he affectionately calls his "parlor guitar." Cheryl cradles her autoharp, her clear alto voice dancing with the song, also known as the Shaker Hymn, around the sun-drizzled room and into the soul.
Without question, this simple room is a gift.
The instruments they collect and play hang on the walls and parade on stands: fiddle, lap dulcimer, contra bass, African djembe drum, even something called a bowed psaltery - a plaintive, eerie-sounding instrument once played in medieval courtyards. A muscular Starck upright piano from the late 1800s shoulders one wall and a bookcase stacked with songbooks invites browsing on the other.
A dream arrangement.
"This room gives us the room to enjoy doing what we love the most," Ray says. "And that's making music."
A couple of years ago, when the kids were grown and moved out of the house, the Belangers made a rather unusual decision.
Rather than downsize the little home they built in the 1980s on a pristine swatch of woods and country not far from where Citrus Park Mall now sprawls, they decided to try something radical: supersize.
Both passionate folk musicians who play in bands and host regular musical events in their home - from a monthly singing circle to rollicking jams and church events - wanted more space for their passion.
It might have been easier to sell the house and buy something bigger elsewhere. Land prices have soared in the area. And developers routinely sniff like bloodhounds.
But the house, the first and only one the Belangers have ever owned, sang its own song to them. Their 8 1/2-acre tract adjoins the plant nursery that Ray co-owned and has since retired from. It also backs up to environmentally protected wetlands that stretch for a quarter mile east toward Veterans Expressway.
"It's just a little bit of country back here," Ray explains. "We want to stay here until we die. We love it."
So, they nearly doubled the size of their once 2,000-square-foot house on Del Valle Road. And that's not counting the grown-up tree house and maze of decks they added to the back yard.
Roughly one-third of the addition was devoted to the music room.
Now, they can host their monthly, community "singing circle" with ease. On the last Wednesday night of every month, about 20 people arrive to sing contemporary, gospel, spiritual and old-time folk tunes the Belangers have gathered and compiled in homemade songbooks:
Amazing Grace.
I'll Fly Away.
Will the Circle be Unbroken.
The Water is Wide.
"The whole idea," Cheryl explains, "is fun, happy music and the joy of singing with others."
Anyone who loves to sing can join.
Singers typically gather in the middle of the music room around an inlaid circle made from walnut. The walnut is darker than the lighter oak hardwood flooring and was given to the Belangers by Dr. Edward Linebaugh, a now-retired Tampa dentist.
The use of a circle was influenced by one at the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina, where Ray teaches two weeks a year.
The school promotes the noncompetitive Danish folk school method of learning: no grades, no pressure, lots of conversational learning. And the circle holds much meaning, both spiritually and visually.
"To me, it speaks of the never-ending circle of life," Cheryl says.
On a weekday afternoon, the Belangers pull up a pair of simple, post-and-rung ladder-back chairs that Ray's brother built from red oak.
Their story, in a way, is a true Florida one, built on migration patterns, luck and dreams.
Ray, 64, grew up in a family of musicians in a French Canadian mill town not far from Portland, Maine. Siblings, parents, aunts and uncles played banjos, fiddles, guitars, mandolins - "lots of folk instruments," Ray explains. The family moved to Florida in 1953 because Ray's father suffered from an upper-respiratory condition vastly improved by the semi-tropical climate.
Ray and Cheryl met when she was singing at a church event at a Tampa mall.
Soul mates from the beginning, they married within a year.
At the time, Cheryl, now 57, worked as a dental hygienist but has since retired to follow a new career path: certified music practitioner.
As the artist-in-residence in the Arts in Medicine Program at H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center, she plays autoharp and sings to soothe the sick and dying.
Ray, who once designed and installed new landscaping for million-dollar homes, now specializes in the hammered dulcimer. He devotes his life almost entirely to music and to teaching students, some of whom travel from as far as St. Augustine. He performs in several bands, including a contra dance band and their folk band, Simple Gifts.
And he and Cheryl have taken home top honors from the annual Florida Old Time Music Championships.
Cheryl is equally well-known for the songs she writes and performs about Florida. A sampling includes, Big Cypress Swamp Boogie, Thank God I Live in Florida (inspired by a trip across Alligator Alley) and The Magic Withlacoochee (composed after a canoe trip on the river).
"On the river gently running," Cheryl sings, "heard the pileated drumming, and the peace and beauty carried me away."
In a way, the song is a metaphor for the small parcel of pristine Florida that the Belangers hold onto and call home.
They share it with Ray's 92-year-old mother, Rose Belanger, their big mutt, Bear, and two cats, Izzy and Scooter.
Since they expanded, there's room for everybody.
"Most couples our age are downsizing," Ray says. "But not us. We expanded our lives on this little bit of country that was left behind."
- To learn more about the community singing circle call: (813) 920-5372.
