Music, Community, Flour & Fate in Glen Ellyn

An African proverb says, “It takes a village to raise a child.” Similarly, it takes a community to educate them. It takes teachers and parents, as well as volunteers and businesses to come together when the community needs them to, to support our educators in being able to give everything they can to their students. This is exactly what our ‘village’ did.

Music, community, flour and fate all came together on the night of February 15th to support a worthy cause; education and kids. The Music Education Foundation does exactly what its name suggests. They’re a parent and volunteer run booster organization that work alongside District 41 to enrich everything related to musical education and youth. This year, an MEF parent-volunteer came in to new restaurant flour + wine with a humble aim of garnering a small percentage of one night’s revenue for their annual fundraiser. MEF uses these funds throughout the rest of the year to support and assist anything related to music education. When MEF parent-volunteer, Abbey Leffel, spoke to Michael Vai of flour + wine, she changed the shape of MEF forever. What she didn’t know is that Michael has a talented, and famous, rocker brother who would soon be asked to join forces with the Music Education Foundation.

Thanks to flour + wine and Michael, acclaimed musician Steve Vai donated a personally autographed Ibanez guitar to the raffle, which brought in ticket sales from places as far away as South America, Norway and Australia. The flour + wine ‘Steve Vai raffle’ ended up raising $10,000 for the MEF program to support youth education. To go one step further, Steve even decided to fly down to Glen Ellyn and hang out at Hadley junior high with hundreds of middle schoolers on the day of the raffle. Steve talked to them about his history, how he spends his time now, and how each of the kids has something special and unique that they love doing, to offer the world. Afterwards, he opened up the floor for a long Q & A session. The kids asked questions like how Steve started playing the guitar, how he figured out what he wanted to do with his life, if he’d give their friend (who was a huge fan but too scared to even talk to Steve) a hug, what his favorite animal is, and what the story is behind his blood being in a special line of guitars. Steve enjoyed the kids as much as they enjoyed learning about him. Between signing autographs, giving hugs out like candy and taking pictures with kids and their parents, Steve even made time to call a student’s friend who was at home sick.. just to say hi.

Later that night Steve came back to Hadley to pull the winning name out of the guitar case; and this is where some magic happened. He ended up pulling out “Kelly Maganini;” a Hadley middle school student. Anyone who knows her, including her music teacher Paul Marchese, immediately felt a lump in their throat.

What most people don’t know about Kelly is that just two months prior to the raffle, she lost her Dad, Rich Maganini to cancer. Each of the Maganini’s has had to redefine their lives without the man they all love as being a part of it. But fate and love can transcend life, and sometimes even death.

Tammy Maganini (Kelly’s Mom) said in an interview, that:

“He [Rich Maganini] was in a band when he was younger, he knew everything about guitarists. He even played an Ibanez.. I seriously think that my husband pulled some strings from up above. When Kelly’s name got pulled, we were on our way to our first skiing trip that my husband wasn’t going to be with us on.. and I just felt like it [winning the guitar] was a sign from him that everything was alright and to go and have fun.”

Tammy ended the interview saying that they are going to hang Kelly’s Ibanez guitar on the wall right next to her Dad’s.

Everyone involved in the raffle knew how special bringing home the guitar was to the Maganini’s; one might even call it “fate.” Is it a coincidence that Kelly’s Dad played on an Ibanez himself? Is it coincidence that between the 2 short months of Kelly losing her Dad and winning the guitar, she started taking guitar lessons? Is it a coincidence that, of the thousands of people from across the globe that could have won the Ibanez guitar, it was a girl that just lost her guitarist Father? One thing is for certain, while the Maganini’s have had to deal with loss, winning this guitar brings a sense of peace and comfort to their family because they know the man they all love is still looking down on them.

A special thanks to Michael Vai and the staff of flour + wine for bringing this to the table, to MEF for providing the opportunity and support, to District 41 administrators and educators for fostering creativity and supporting this process from beginning to end, to School of Rock for jumping in and offering their hands wherever they could and to Steve Vai for having a huge heart and creating the opportunity for a little bit of magic to happen. 

- Tiffany Berry

flour + wine community realtions