Norm & Marci took square dance lessons from Chuck Rogers at the Valley Squares AND from George Kettner in 1973, then round dance lessons from Bill Allen in 1974. By 1976 Norm was club caller for the Bustle Bumpers at the Portland Square Dance Center, 50th & Kelly. He called for them for 3 years. They just ASSUMED he'd cue and teach rounds. That's what all the callers did back then. SO, he had to jump in and learn how to do it. Turns out, Round Dancing was one of their biggest success stories. 25-couple classes were the norm for Norm and Marci at the crest of the dancing wave.
Norm called for the Hillsboro Hoedown from 1979 until 2003, 24 years! He was on the program at the Pentiction Peach Festival in Penticton, B.C. (Canada) in 1979 and missed calling at that festival only twice during the next 30 years. In the midst of all that, He and Marci started a caller's club, the Plus Knights, in 1984. It's still going strong.
Norm sampled the National Caller limelight in 1990 when he accepted an offer to be the featured caller at the Harvest Hoedown Weekend in Marysville, California. That involved calling at mainstream through advance levels, conducting styling clinics, etc. Afterward, he and Marci discussed it and decided they didn't want to invest the time and strain of doing that on a routine basis. Too bad for the dancers in the rest of the nation, but very good for us here in the great Pacific Northwet. We wound up with an A-Number-One caller who is in town a lot and SELDOM calls "relay the deucy" from a "thar star."
Norm says' "Square Dancing has been SUCH a blessing. So many neat people. So much fun over the years."
