In Memory of Dr. A.C. "Cheesy" Voran

Dr. A.C. “Cheesy” Voran (1906-2003), founding director of the Centenary College Choir, started the program in 1941 at the request of Ralph Squires, then director of Centenary’s music school.  Voran, who had previously started choirs at two colleges, jumped at the chance. 

Over the next 30 years, Voran took the program from local glee club to international recognition.  By the time he retired in the spring of 1972, the Centenary College Choir enjoyed two long-term engagements at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, entertained front-line troops in Korea, and represented Shreveport and Centenary College before numerous gatherings of Lions International and the General Conference of the United Methodist Church.

He'd be the first to tell you that he was J.C.D.--Just a Choir Director. Well, he was a choir director, but the "just" doesn't apply. He was a superb musician and an outstanding director, no doubt about that. But his greatest gift was something even more personal: He inspired people to love and respect one another. When we speak of the Centenary College Choir "spirit," that's what we're talking about--a multi-generational bond among people who came together to make music, and wound up making lifelong friends with everyone else who has ever been in the choir. All because of one man.

He came from Kansas, already known by the nickname his McPherson College basketball teammates gave him. Academia may have called him Dr. A.C. Voran, and maybe his mother called him Alvin, but to the rest of the world, especially the generations of students who loved him — and the members of Noel Memorial Methodist Church Choirs he led for more than forty years — he will forever be Cheesy.

In his retirement, and even after his death in 2003, hundreds of choir alumni and friends continue to honor Cheesy by their support of the A.C. “Cheesy” Voran Endowed Choir Scholarship program and by funding the A. C. “Cheesy” Voran Endowed Professorship, which partially funds the current director position, today held by David A. Hobson.