Band
Name: Symphony Square
Width: 4.917"
Depth: 4.75"
Color: Black plus one
Comment: Good Life/Jewish Exponent
Ad Number: 00073336
Continued from Page 15
Better Living Your Way !
Symphony Square
Assisted Living & Memory Care
35 Old Lancaster Road • Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004
(610) 660-6560
WWW.SYMPHONYSQ.COM Name: HCR Manor Care/Arden Court
Width: 4.917"
Depth: 4.75"
Color: Black plus one
Comment: The Good Life
Ad Number: 00073199
16 MAY 18, 2017
THE GOOD LIFE
upbeat as you can tell from the music, and
it’s a chance for us and a chance for them;
we interact with them. So it gives them joy
and it gives us joy.”
Jozef Bobik, 95, is the oldest member of
the group. The rest are “young whipper-
snappers,” he said with a laugh.

The violinist joined in as part of the
first seven members. Immigrating to
America in 1927 from Czechoslovakia, he
has played music all his life.

When he was a child, his grandparents
asked Bobik if he wanted to learn how to
play an instrument.

“I said, ‘Yes, trombone,’” Bobik
recalled. “So they went out with my father
and came home with a violin.”
He learned to play by ear and has since
picked up the harmonica, piano, clarinet
and saxophone. If he can hum a song or
sing it, he can play it, he said.

“I don’t know how to play the trom-
bone,” he laughed. “The one instrument I
wanted to learn how to play, I haven’t
learned how.

“Yet.” Playing with the Grateful Alive gives
him a chance to be around people who
love music as much as he does.

“It’s social. It’s camaraderie; you’re
friends. It gives you a chance to go out and
you’re doing what you love to do,” he said.

“If I’m not playing the violin, I’m whistling
or singing or humming. … I enjoy the
group, and I would encourage every
parent to have their children learn some
music. It’s the universal language.”
Carolyn Barker, 88, joined the original
group in the late ’80s after a friend wanted
her to meet some people.

She went to a coffeehouse and met one
of the men who started Grateful Alive.

“When he found out I played the
violin, he said, ‘You have to come to our
rehearsal.’ And I said, ‘You haven’t heard
me play yet!’” she laughed. “He said, ‘Just
come.’ So I did, and that’s how I got into
the group.”
The name of the band, she said, came
from one of the original violinists,
Virginia Love, who died in 2014. (“The
name gets everybody,” acknowledged
saxophonist Tom Chambers with a smile.)
The group has since grown from its
original five members, but the value in
what they do remains the same.

“I just love the music, and I love the
camaraderie of the group. We have a
wonderful band, we really do. We have
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