Hometown Hero - Mary Hvizda
This week’s Hometown Hero is a bit of a celebrity. You may have seen her on YouTube lately in a video called “Grandma Drummer” which at last count had over 3 million views.
If you have not seen the video yet, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRhoHN8x_00.
Mary had come to Coalition Drum Shop in La Crosse to look at the drum sets there and rocked out a pretty amazing drum solo. One of the employees filmed her and put the video on the shop’s YouTube channel. And the rest they say is history.
For Mary, music has always been a part of her life. She was a member of the Blackhawk Drum and Bugle Corps in La Crosse where she played the bugle for three years. It was not until her last year with the Corps that she joined the drum line. It was there that she met other girls who loved music and encouraged her to buy her first drum kit. Soon, she joined a band called the Chantells, the first all-girl rock band in La Crosse. After about three years with rock and roll, she moved on to country western playing in nearly a dozen bands before “retiring” from music about 23 years ago.
Her favorite part of drumming and being a drummer she says is the rhythm of it. She likes to play around with different beats, changing speed and rhythm to get new and different patterns. She says that the drums are better than other instruments because of the rhythm they provide.
Another draw of the drums for Mary is that female drummers were very rare. When she started out with the Chantells, there were not a lot of other female drummers out there and she often had to deal with the teasing of male performers. Even now when female drummers are becoming more and more common, people like Mary are still very unique. Not many women can play the drums the way she can.
Mary and her rocking drum skills have become much more than an internet sensation. Her story was picked up National Public Radio, United Press International, British newspaper Metro, ABC World News and Good Morning America. Her video has comments in English, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and Croatian just to name a few.
Despite her instant celebrity, Mary says she has no plans to perform. Her phone has been ringing off the hook for interviews ever since her video went viral. She says that since she has been retired from music for so long, her music now includes watching music programs on TV and looking in music stores. Which is how this all started. Still she says, after working hard in factory jobs and in a cleaning business, she really is enjoying her retirement.
As a thank you for all the publicity that Mary’s rocking solo gave the drum shop, Coalition Drum Shop presented Mary with a free KAT electronic drum set worth $800. It is the first kit that she has had since she sold her last one in 1990.
And to think Mary had never heard of YouTube until a few days ago.
So enjoy the ride, Mary! Thanks for putting La Crosse and Onalaska on the map.
Congratulations to you, Mary. Keep up the good work and continue to be a Hometown Hero.
Hometown Hero is a weekly feature put together by Rep. Steve Doyle (D-Onalaska). If you have any suggestions of a Hometown Hero, send a short description of why you think this person should be a Hometown Hero and contact information of both you and the nominee to rep.doyle@legis.wisconsin.gov.