Retired music teacher gives nightly trumpet performance from her porch

Friday, May 29, 2020
COLLINGSWOOD, New Jersey (WPVI) -- Something delightful happens at sunset each night on Linwood Avenue in Collingswood, New Jersey.

Marge Lafferty Gunning, a retired music teacher, plays her trumpet on her front porch.
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Lafferty Gunning started because it made her feel better. Turns out, she uplifted the entire neighborhood.

People on their own porches wait for the first trumpet notes to ring through the night air.

Weeks ago, concerned for her daughter and her family in New York, she began the outdoor concerts each night.

"I just felt I had to do something so I played 'Taps'. People across the street said 'who died?' I said, a couple of thousand people are dying," said Lafferty Gunning. "With that, I felt better after playing taps and expressing myself a little bit. Then, I started doing some patriotic songs. You know, America and God Bless America."



On the night Action News stopped by, Lafferty Gunning was playing the theme from the movie, "Rocky'.

"It's great for the community, great for the neighbors," said neighbor Mary Ann Manning. "We love it and it's getting everybody together."
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Another neighbor, Kate Allendoerfer said, "I think it's been super moving. And it's been interesting because it's sort of brought us together and we didn't even know we were together."

Her daughters Regina, also in Collingswood, and Meghan, the one in New York, make sure to make the concerts.

"We sometimes have a race to get in the car and my children are saying, 'Quick, we've gotta get there by sunset,'" said her daughter Regina Schmidt.

"It was an amazing reassurance that my mom had our backs from so far away, and it was so nice because we would just FaceTime in and she would play something," said Meghan Lynch, Marge's daughter in Westchester, New York.



Lafferty Gunning had hoped to wrap up the concerts by Memorial Day, but by popular demand, she returns to her front porch every night at exactly the moment the sunsets.

Her neighbors hope she continues all summer long.
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