Central Florida native Davis Gaines, who has donned the mask of the Phantom of the Opera more than 2,000 times, is looking forward to a high-school homecoming – of sorts.
Gaines graduated from Edgewater High School in 1972 and will return this Saturday to be honored as one of a dozen alumni inducted into the inaugural Edgewater Hall of Fame.
But Gaines attended Edgewater for only two years – thanks to a quirk of bus routes and district lines. He was dead set against changing schools for his junior year.
“I was forced to go to Edgewater, I had no choice,” Gaines, 57, recalls during a recent phone conversation from his Southern California home.
He had been attending Winter Park High and found a home in that school’s strong performing-arts program. So when a notice arrived that students in his neighborhood, near the Orlando Museum of Art, would be transferred to Edgewater, he was horrified.
He persuaded his father to take him in front of the Orange County School Board to plead his case – but to no avail.
“I was devastated at the time, but in the long run it was a great thing to happen to me,” he says with the benefit of hindsight. “I didn’t know anybody so I took that opportunity to reinvent myself.”
Previously a shy young man, he forced himself to be outgoing. He traded glasses for contact lenses.
“I joined all the clubs I could join,” he says, laughing. “Key Club, American Field Service, National Honor Society, the yearbook staff, and I made friends.”
Participating in so many activities also showed him a life outside the world of theater.
“I kind of put my theater stuff on hold for those years,” he says. “It made me a more well-rounded person.”
Like many of us, he has lost touch with his high-school buddies over the years; his busy travel schedule as he performs in cities across the nation makes it even harder to keep in touch.
“I’ve never attended a reunion,” he says. “I live so far away and I was always working.”
He did meet up with old friends in 2002 when he sang the national anthem before the 50th-anniversary Edgewater-Boone high-school football game.
And he keeps up the old-fashioned way: “I stay in touch through my parents and my sister. I hear through the grapevine.”
Gaines’ family still lives in Central Florida, so he’s a frequent visitor. He maintains community involvement, too – he’s on the board of directors for the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, currently struggling to find the funds to start construction.
“I really believe we need that in Orlando very badly. I grew up with the Bob Carr, and it’s about time we had something better,” he says. “Everyone wants a performing-arts center – it’s just a question of how we get it.”
He has fond memories of growing up in Orlando. One of his first jobs was as a costumed character at Disney World.
“Even though I was behind a big old head, I felt like I was acting,” he remembers.
His first singing job came while he was a teenager washing dishes at Rosie O’Grady’s Good Time Emporium. He was allowed to put down the dishrag and perform a few times a night.
“My parents would come and see me,” Gaines remembers. “My mom says she knew I was serious about singing if I would wash dishes all night just to sing two or three songs.”
See for yourself
Edgewater High School
Hall of Fame
What:
The Edgewater High School Foundation will inaugurate 12 alumni as the first honorees of a school Hall of Fame. A display of the 12 inaugural honorees will be established in the O.R. Davis Auditorium of the school’s new campus. Inductees were chosen for achievement in arts, academics, athletics, community, Eagle spirit and professional accomplishments. Davis Gaines is the only arts honoree. To read about all the honorees, go to OrlandoSentinel.com/schoolzone.
Where:
Edgewater High School, 3100 Edgewater Drive, Orlando
When:
6 p.m. Saturday
Cost:
$75, which includes a reception, dinner and the induction. Proceeds fund scholarships for Edgewater students, school equipment and staff development programs.
Call:
407-835-4900
Online:
edgewaterfoundation.com
