Playing in the band was my identity from Junior High through college. A surprise gift in my adulthood showed me it was my mother's identity too.
Somewhere towards the end of my sixth-grade year at Pope Elementary School, the band director for the soon-to-be opened Shackelford Junior High did a presentation about musical instruments. Many of us were amazed at the sounds of tubas and flutes, saxophones and trombones, oboes and timpani.
Those of us that wanted to join the band were invited to write down on a note card what instrument we wanted to learn to play, so I wrote down “trumpet” because I was always amazed by that instrument. Later, I was invited to go into a room and try out some instruments. Ironically, or perhaps it was fate, the room was down the hall from my mother’s classroom.
And I will play, for the first time, my mother’s horn. I will play in her honor and complete the legacy. I’m quite sure that she will listen patiently. I know that she will be encouraging me. I will feel her thanks for my “performance”.
The band director encouraged a different fate than trumpet. He put a French Horn in my hands. I had never really considered this instrument that I barely knew, but that’s what we agreed upon. I went up the hallway and told my mom. She told me she was very happy for me and plans were made for me to pick up an F Horn from the Junior High School.
After learning how to play the instrument during the summer, torturing my mom and siblings with practicing, I quickly took to being in the band. The band was my identity in Junior High School. Throughout that time, my mother was patient, encouraging, and always thanked me for my “performance”, be that practicing in my bedroom or after a SJC concert.
By the time I hit ninth-grade (still Junior High where I lived), I was in the top band at school. Ninth-grade was also the year that my mother’s cancer reappeared. Her illness dragged laborously on for the first part of that school year. On a cold morning after Christmas break, I was at a solo and ensemble contest performing a difficult song, when my mother passed. I found out when I got home.
I don’t know the last time that I played for my mother. Was it me practicing in my bedroom? What it at a Junior High concert? I can’t remember. I’d like to think that she heard my performance at the contest. If so, she was patient, encouraging, and likely thanked me for my “performance”. Many times, I’ve thought that perhaps I played for her as she made her way home.
My love for playing in the band and for the French Horn grew when I moved from a suburban Texas Junior High to a rural Kansas high school in the middle of my ninth-grade year. The high school band director was among the many adults that nurtured and cared for this scared, grieving, young man who had just moved to town. Among my dearest friends in high school were Judy Riggs in first chair and Ron Wild in third chair of the Horn section. What were the odds that I would move to a new school and find a Horn player who shared my last name? And truth be told, Ron was a much better musician than I. He was, however, somehow content to sit in third chair and be an incredibly close friend.
It was in high school that Dan King, the band director, introduced me to the Eb Alto Horn. It is affectionately known as a ‘blatt weasel’. I loved it because it was easier to take into the football stands and on a marching route than the French Horn. I almost loved it as much as the F Horn.
I took my love of the Horn into college, quickly signing up for as many musical groups as I was able. I even considered being a French Horn major, but that consideration only lasted a couple of weeks. It was in college that I learned to play the trombone, the trumpet, and the Euphonium from a master of brass instruments, Mr. Roger Thorstenburg. The trombone opened the door to the Jazz Band and the other instruments were handed out to me when Mr. Thorstenburg needed more sound from a section in one of his brilliant arrangements. I met some of my closest friends in the Horn section, notably Don, Marlene, and Lyle, who became one of my closest friends in life. After a couple of years, I was reunited in the Horn section with my high school friend Ron.
Among the organizations and groups with whom I played was a group of brass players that would play the “Memorial Day” circuit in and around Lindsborg, Kansas. We would play music at three local cemeteries on those Monday mornings. Every Memorial Day, I think about those years of playing in honor of others.
I left college without ever actually owning a French Horn. I had always borrowed one from the school I was attending. So, as I continued to play for church groups and civic bands, it was with an Eb Alto Horn that I purchased in college or the Euphonium that I purchased later on. I never thought I would own a French Horn. I was still delighted to play whatever and wherever I could.
Fast forward a couple of decades later. My mother was the youngest among her siblings and was the first to pass away. Elizabeth Jane had three older brothers and the time came to pay our last respects to her oldest brother, who we affectionately called Walker. As I pulled up to my uncle’s house prior to the funeral, my uncle Don had just arrived. He summoned me to his car. He opened the trunk and pulled out the most unusual brass instrument. It was a French Horn, but like none that I had ever seen before.
Instead of a gold brass color like almost every French Horn I had ever seen, it was silver like my Euphonium. Where the slender French Horn rotary valves should be, there were piston valves like my Alto Horn. When I instinctively picked it up, it didn’t feel right in my hands. My left hand should grip near the valves, my right hand should go in the bell. Instead, the valves were intended to be played with the right hand.
My uncle told me that this horn belonged to my mother. She played it when she was in high school. And he wanted me to have it.
Memories flooded my brain as the tears flooded my eyes. In all the times that she heard me practice and play, in all the times I struggled to hit a note or complete a phrase correctly, she never revealed to me that she played a French Horn. She just was patient, encouraging, and always thanked me for my “performance”. Now, a legacy was passed on to me when I first held this instrument.
Since that day, I’ve wondered: Did she go down the hall to the room where the band director was meeting with kids and ask him to assign me the French Horn? I smile when I realize that she knew the struggles of playing a French Horn (ask anyone who has tried… it is a difficult instrument to play and master). In my mind, I would like to think that she indeed did walk down the hall and quietly asked Mr. Garrett to do just that.
I’ve not had a reason to play this instrument for anyone else. On this Memorial Day 2020, however, I heard of the “Taps Across America” idea and have decided to join in. I suspect that I will not be very good, as it has been awhile since I’ve played any instrument and I’ve never played this French Horn for anyone else.
However, I will play for fallen soldiers who now rest. I will play for my father who was in the Air Force as a dentist and who was an Episcopal priest. I will play to honor their memories.
And I will play, for the first time, my mother’s horn. I will play in her honor and complete the legacy. I’m quite sure that she will listen patiently. I know that she will be encouraging me. I will feel her thanks for my “performance”.
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