`OLDE-TYME' BAND CONCERT; HANDBELLS AND HOOVERS AND A RETURN TO THE PODIUM

L.G. (Freck) Shivelbine, Mayor Al Spradling III, KFVS-TV's Mary-Ann Maloney and Southeast Missourian editor Joe Sullivan will perform as the Hoover Quartet tonight at Southeast Missouri State University.

Harold Lichtenegger taught band in the Puxico schools for 25 years before a stroke forced him to retire in 1992. The 53-year-old was paralyzed on his left side and has lost some of his peripheral vision.

But he has learned ways to compensate for his disability, and at one point in tonight's 15th annual Olde-Tyme Band Concert will take the baton from Southeast Symphonic Wind Ensemble conductor Dr. Robert Gifford. Lichtenegger will conduct in public for the first time since his stroke, a march by a favorite composer John Philip Sousa.

Also on the evening's bill are flutist Paul Thompson; the Air Force ROTC Straight Arrow Drill Team; the Collegiate Ringers handbell ensemble of Centenary United Methodist Church; and the Hoover Quartet, a novelty act in which four well-known Cape Girardeau personages will attempt music on three vacuum cleaners and a floor polisher.

The Hoovers are Cape Girardeau Mayor Al Spradling III, KFVS-TV anchor Mary-Ann Maloney, Southeast Missourian editor Joe Sullivan and L.G. (Freck) Shivelbine of Shivelbine's Music Store.

The concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the University Center Ballroom at Southeast. Admission is $5 for adults, $3.50 for seniors and students under 18, and $2 with a university ID.

Proceeds from the concert will go toward helping endow a music scholarship in Lichtenegger's name at the university. About $8,500 has been raised so far, most of it through a dance organized by his brother John about three years ago. The amount needed to endow the scholarship is $10,000.

Lichtenegger, who now lives at Wappapello Lake, grew up in Jackson. He and his wife Anita met in the late 1960s when both played in the Golden Eagles. He is a past president of the Southeast Missouri Music Educators Association and was on the board of the Missouri Music Educators Association.

He has made a major recovery from the stroke and didn't lose any of his learned knowledge. He walks with difficulty and has been using a wheelchair recently because of a foot infection.

Tonight's concert excites him. "It's going to be a great mental boost to conduct," he says.

Having a scholarship in his name is important to him, Lichtenegger said, because it will reward future students and remind them of his example -- that of someone who as a sixth-grader watched LeRoy Mason conduct the Jackson High School Band and knew he wanted to do that, too.

"LeRoy Mason was my mentor," he said of Mason, the legendary director of Southeast's marching band from 1957 to 1976. became a legendary Southeast band director. "If it wasn't for Leroy Mason I wouldn't have had those 25 years."