44 years later: 1978 stars of Winnacunnet High School’s ‘The Music Man’ reunite on Broadway

Carol Livingstone Holderman and Scott Fifer separately traveled the world since they starred together in “The Music Man” as students at Winnacunnet High School. But after 44 years, they came together on Broadway, once again under the show’s marquee.

Carol Holderman was a senior and Scott Fifer a junior in 1978, when they played the lead roles in the school’s spring musical “The Music Man.” Since parting that year, they hadn’t seen each other until recently. That’s when Holderman took a train into New York City from her home in Connecticut and Fifer flew six hours from his California home to take in the revival of the famed 1950s musical.

This time Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster were in the roles Fifer and Holderman loved playing in ‘78. Though not on the stage, according to Fifer and Holderman, the experience was even more precious this time round.

“We just picked up again as friends as if no time had passed; the whole day was magical,” said 62-year-old Holderman. “I told my friend that I feel like Scott pulling together the trip is saving the rest of my life, because since the pandemic so many people are disengaged and leaving the house is so stressful.”

Fifer, 60, said the second he saw “The Music Man” would be on Broadway in the spring of 2022 after being shuttered by the pandemic, he knew he “had to go to New York to see it.”

“And I instantly thought how amazing it would be to see it with Carol,” he said. “I emailed her and said, ‘By any chance will you come and see the show with me?’”

“It took me 36 seconds to say ‘yes,’” Holderman said, laughing. “I told my husband, ‘No matter what, just put me on that train.’ I knew I’d regret it if I didn’t go.”

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Life takes center stage

Individually, Holderman and Fifer have led lives that would make interesting movies. Holderman eloped with her high school sweetheart in April of her senior year, causing “a little bit of a scandal,” according to Fifer. She would proceed to travel the world, moving dozens of times in the 38 years her husband, Doug, was in the Navy before he retired in 2015.

Holderman is the mother of two sons, and along with raising them and enjoying exotic assignments in places like Sardinia and Hawaii, she earned a degree in computer drafting, as well as a fine arts bachelor’s degree in sculpting, which she got at the age of 60.

“I just love going to school,” she said.

Fifer’s life and career are as adventurous, starting with being the personal assistant to the late U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy for three years while getting his degree in political science from D.C.’s American University. He took a gap year pursuing his love of theater, working in “off, off-Broadway” productions in New York, before returning to New England to get his law degree at Boston College.

Six years at a Wall Street law firm followed until the entertainment bug bit again.

“I decided to move to California to become a screenwriter,” Fifer said.

A working screenwriter in Hollywood for 10 years, in 2006 Fifer took a trip to Africa. It would be his first, but not his last. The trip changed his life, he said. After visiting an orphanage there, he personally took some of its occupants under his adoptive wing. More transitional still, he left a successful screenwriting career to help the world’s most vulnerable, its children.

“The GO Campaign was founded by Scott; it’s a charitable organization for children,” Holderman said. “He’s in California and has ties with entertainment. He has people like Robert Pattinson and Ewan McGregor as ambassadors for GO Campaign. It’s an organization I feel 100 percent safe putting my money in.”

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An encore to friendship

But according to Holderman and Fifer, their relationship went dark for decades after they left high school. So, how did this dynamic twosome on very separate paths find each other again? Cyberspace.

“Scott was one of the first people I looked up on Facebook; I think it was around 2006 when GO Campaign was in its infancy,” Holderman said. “The first person I looked up was my best friend in high school, Tracey Ashfield.”

Ashfield, Fifer, Doug Holderman and the soon-to-be Carol Holderman were tight in high school, she said, thanks to working together in the many music and drama productions at WHS.

“The whole drama department made Scott and I forever friends,” she said. “‘The Music Man’ solidified it.”

But were Fifer and the then Carol Livingstone ever a romantic item in high school?

“Oh no,” Fifer said, laughing. “Just good friends. Doug Holderman had her all tied up in high school. But Carol has such a pretty voice, when I was in high school, I’d go over to her house, sit in a chair and ask her to sing to me.”

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That comfortableness wasn’t hard to replicate, they said. When they came together for the first time in more than four decades they reveled in their old times and caught up on the in-between years. The only time they stopped talking was to watch the play.

“We were so excited to see each other. There was nothing awkward about it,” Fifer said. “I must have been a happy high school kid because everything about that time makes me happy. When I hear ‘70s music, it makes me smile.”

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That good-natured revelry doesn’t surprise Holderman about her former leading man.

“I remember him as a 14-year-old who was very comfortable in his skin,” Holderman said. “And he still is.”

Listening to them, one believes this may not be the last reunion.

“It was a wonderful day, and it made a difference in the quality of my life,” Holderman said. “I think we might consider doing it again with more of our high school friends.”

“Especially after the pandemic, you realize how precious and rare and important these friendships are,” Fifer said. “It’s something you have to hang on to after 44 years. I’m lucky.”

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Winnacunnet High School’s ‘The Music Man’ stars reunite on Broadway