The News

As I traveled to Bowman-Grey Hospital, I was a proud parent; no longer an expectant father. A train of thoughts ran through my head. I didn’t even know what Ann had named our baby. We had discussed names in the past, but I thought it her privilege to name her.
What did the doctor mean when he said he had something else to tell me? I have always been able to fore”-feel ominous events, able to fore-“feel happy events, but unwilling to believe my feelings about the latter. In this case the feeling was ominous. I dismissed the feeling: I was a proud parent of a baby girl!
When I arrived on the floor where Ann’s room was, I was met by a nurse or receptionist, don’t remember which, but this person ushered me into a waiting room. “The Doctor will be in shortly,” she said. I didn’t have long to wait. I don’t remember the doctor’s name, now, but he shook my hand and bid me be seated. He congratulated me on a healthy baby girl. My heart lifted for a moment. “However there was a problem.” What could be the problem if our baby girl was healthy? Your child was born with a cleft palate and a hare-lip. I was stunned!
My mind went back to a day in Berea when I was about 5 years old. I was playing in front of my grandmother’s house when an older man, possibly in his sixties came out of the house across the street. He had a weird looking face. I could see his tongue in his nose!
His mouth and nose seemed to be in the same place. I could not make sense of what I had seen. Later, it was explained to me that he had a condition called hare-lip.
My heart went out to her immediately. I thought of Ann, how’s she taking it?
The doctor asked if I wanted to see my wife and child. He took me to Ann’s room. She smiled when she saw me, but I could see the look of concern on her face. I hugged her or made some motion of concern and the doctor, Ann, and I, talked about the blessing that had occurred in our lives and how to do the best for her. The best medical option was immediate correction, to the extent possible.
My only thoughts were do the best for Robin. I felt so bad for her, knowing what faced her, the rest of her life. Even now my heart is heavy, thinking of the hateful, cynical world we had brought her into. I began to hear questions: which family created this problem. How could this have happened? What could have caused this?
I was not concerned with what or who caused Robins problem, I was concerned about the world’s reception of this wonderful, beautiful child. Yes, beautiful. I told her many times and in as many ways as I could think of, to tell her how beautiful she was. I knew from her silent communication that she was a gentle, intelligent girl even right after birth.

I fed her, washed her diapers (her mother couldn’t get out of bed for 3-4 days), cleaned her face, made her formula, washed her bottles, and sterilized her bottles. Her nipples had to be cut a certain way, and I cut all her nipples so that she could get the milk from her bottle.
The operation happened the day after her birth. I’m sure this is why she was and probably is repelled by persons dressed to resemble doctors.

The Greatest Gift

The Greatest Gift

Amidst the throes of my problems with the whiney principal, I must have needed reassurance and solace. Because one evening, Ann and I went to our favorite beer drinking place, chatted with the owner, bartender, and downed two or three beers. I remember the owner had recently bought a pink Cadillac. I guess I remember it because it was pink. (I was beginning to be jealous of guys with big cars for the first time in my life!)
We eventually left the bar-restaurant and headed home.
A month or so later, Ann told me we were pregnant! That lifted my spirits tremendously.
I was going to be a dad! Of a wonderful little girl! After 10 years, I was a man! We bought a lot of baby stuff. We didn’t know if it was a boy or girl. In those days they didn’t have all that sound and x-ray technology they have now. We just had to wait and see.
In about the 4th month Ann passed a little blood, which scared both of us. Here I must say that in those days fathers had almost nothing to do with pregnancy or delivery. So, I was ignorant of the implications of the spotting until Ann told me what she knew; that this could be the forerunner of a possible abortion or premature birth by her body. Intentional abortion was verboten and illegal in those days. I think the doctor gave her something for it and she stopped spotting. I kept on teaching and she kept on doing whatever she usually did.
Delivery time came and went. Ann went to the doctor and he finally decided to give her something that would bring the baby. We waited at home for the pains that never came. Oh, Ann would have a slight feeling but not the excruciating pain associated with birth.
Finally the doctor opined that puncturing the water sac was the only way to persuade that stubborn baby to make her entrance into the world.
To the reader: Please understand that fathers were not allowed in the birthing room.
The doctor came to the waiting room and told me that it would be an hour, maybe four, so I had might as well go home. They would call me as soon as something happened.
I now feel I have to explain that fact whenever the subject comes up because I feel I should have been there. But that’s the way the times were just 50 years ago!
I arrived at the waiting room until the doctor came in. Finally he arrived and sat beside me. He congratulated me on being a father and said he had something else to tell me.

The Greatest Gift

Amidst the throes of my problems with the whiney principal, I must have needed reassurance and solace. Because one evening, Ann and I went to our favorite beer drinking place, chatted with the owner, bartender, and downed two or three beers. I remember the owner had recently bought a pink Cadillac. I guess I remember it because it was pink. (I was beginning to be jealous of guys with big cars for the first time in my life!)
We eventually left the bar-restaurant and headed home.
A month or so later, Ann told me we were pregnant! That lifted my spirits tremendously.
I was going to be a dad! Of a wonderful little girl! After 10 years, I was a man! We bought a lot of baby stuff. We didn’t know if it was a boy or girl. In those days they didn’t have all that sound and x-ray technology they have now. We just had to wait and see.
In about the 4th month Ann passed a little blood, which scared both of us. Here I must say that in those days fathers had almost nothing to do with pregnancy or delivery. So, I was ignorant of the implications of the spotting until Ann told me what she knew; that this could be the forerunner of a possible abortion or premature birth by her body. Intentional abortion was verboten and illegal in those days. I think the doctor gave her something for it and she stopped spotting. I kept on teaching and she kept on doing whatever she usually did.
Delivery time came and went. Ann went to the doctor and he finally decided to give her something that would bring the baby. We waited at home for the pains that never came. Oh, Ann would have a slight feeling but not the excruciating pain associated with birth.
Finally the doctor opined that puncturing the water sac was the only way to persuade that stubborn baby to make her entrance into the world.
To the reader: Please understand that fathers were not allowed in the birthing room.
The doctor came to the waiting room and told me that it would be an hour, maybe four, so I had might as well go home. They would call me as soon as something happened.
I now feel I have to explain that fact whenever the subject comes up because I feel I should have been there. But that’s the way the times were just 50 years ago!
I arrived at the waiting room until the doctor came in. Finally he arrived and sat beside me. He congratulated me on being a father and said he had something else to tell me.

Winston Salem

After a long hiatus from this blog, I’m baaaack! I was talking about Winston-Salem and the schools there. Shortly after moving to Winston-Salem, I became aware that this newspaper publishing band director taught at one of the schools in this very county! I was secretly in awe of his situation, jealous of him and his accomplishments, unwilling to admit to myself that he must have had something on the ball. I was teaching at two schools in the west side of the county, two small schools which appeared to be funded much less than Mineral Springs High, where the “high and mighty” band director taught. I gave no thought to the fact that the two of them would later be as big as the Mineral Springs High School. I did my job, enjoying seeing the students learn (or at least some of them) and improve. I was pursuing the teaching model I used in Kentucky, one that stood me in good stead in the past. Looking back I think I was on the right track. In fact I was doing well enough to generate a recommendation from the principals that I be selected to fill the vacancy created by the sudden resignation of the exalted BAND DIRECTOR! I was seen as his replacement, and was offered the job at Mineral Springs. I accepted thinking I had already had it made. I forgot that “pride goeth before a fall”!
I took over the reigns of a sputtering horse. This step cost me dearly and possibly caused me to become disenchanted with band directing. I came to the job with glowing recommendations from Mr. Mclean who was in the superintendents office as assistant superintendent as well as the principals I worked under. The former band director produced so many accomplishments, I felt I had to equal his work the first year. Of course that wasn’t possible. The better students were the older students and they had graduated! Suddenly I was faced with a monumental task! I had to produce a smart marching band, publish a newspaper, which I had no idea of how to do. I was teaching under an old principal who, unbeknownst to me was keeping his job through politics
at the local (parent) level. I was in over my head! I remember he was a whiner. One of my students was a baritone horn player, the son of one of the district overseers who approved promotions and personnel, including me, recommending to the main school board. This young man befriended me and was around me most of the time during practice, reminding me of how the former guy used to do it. His father a rough, retired businessman who used to own a lot of vending machines. He was unrelenting in his desire to have his son graduate as a member o the “world’s greatest band.” By the way he was instrumental in seeing that the band had its own bus! This was unheard of back then and it was also one of the things I heard before I ever made a move to WS. He had a lot of influence over the whinny principal.

Quonset Huts

The University purchased some surplus quonset huts (a carry-over from the recent war) and housed the music department in them. The rest of my college career was spent in those darn buildings. My memory of the rest of my college education is foggy. Before Anne and I got married, I was invited and joined Pi Kappa Alpha, a fraternity on campus. I was unfit for fraternity life because I was hooked on a single girl. I felt loyalty to her and could not run around on her. I had signed on to the marriage thing which cut in on my social life. It was an honor to be asked to join.
Before graduation life was a series of band jobs usually from 9:00 to 1:00 on Friday and Saturday nights.
After graduation getting a real teaching job was foremost. I had the pick of several schools to in which to teach. The owner of a music instrument store, Fred Moore, touted me onto the school at Versailles, Ky. I applied and interviewed with the superintendent and was hired. The Superintendent, George Yates, was an All-American in basketball from the University of Kentucky. Versailles was a friendly town. Papa and Momie lived there briefly shortly after their marriage. Papa worked in Frankfort as Deputy Banking Commissioner and was well known in the area. So, I had it made.
I was not quite through sowing wild oats and surprisingly to me, neither was your mother. We made friends with the Home Ec teacher and her husband. He was a wild one and I did not quite know what to make of him. His father and mother owned a farm near Wilmore, home of Asbury College, a Methodist college. Tom was not a Methodist! Nor any other God-fearing group. Through them, I learned how to drink, carouse and party.
Your mother ate it up. I think she may have had a thing going for him, which surprised me because I thought she and I were well grounded in the church. So much for that! We partied every night at Tom’s and his wife’s (I can’t remember her name) apartment. I got onto a bad path (partying) that did not do me any good for the future. You know, up late get up with hangover go to school and try to teach when I had a football show, a basketball game, a play, or something. It was a fast life.

Big Band Dreams

Bob Bleidt, the Lexington guy I spoke of earlier, had developed a pretty good band, at least we thought so. He decided to go for broke with the band and booked several high school gymnasiums. The idea was we would advertise our coming performance just as the major bands did, by putting up posters on telephone poles and in shop windows. The posters featured the band and the two star vocalists, Jeanne Le Compte and Bill Wesley. Jean Le Compte was in actuality, Jean Beard. (Le Compte was a family name). Bill Wesley was in actuality me. The band played in all the surrounding towns, sometimes to an enthusiastic audience, sometimes not. Then Bob booked us at Indian Lake, north of Cincinnati, O. We played there for a week, playing in the band at night and “partying” during the day. Indian lake was a large lake providing recreational opportunities to the citizens of Ohio. We could rent boats (with oars), which in our day, was a lot of fun. We could swim and play on its shore. Anne went along, but I don’t think she had much fun. When asked to participate in some activity, she always declined. I did not feel like declining, so I played with the crowd, which was all the guys in the band and their girls or wives. I felt guilty not staying with her, which probably made her feel good. I think she came along on the trip just to keep track of me. That was probably a good idea.
Thinking we, as a band could be another Les Brown or Kay Kaiser was heady stuff.; until we got back home and had to start working for a living!
During all this dance band activity, I had to keep up my classes, practice my trombone and work toward graduation. Anne, too, had organ practice. Anne was a year ahead of me since I got a late start due to my time in the navy. She was graduating a year ahead and had a graduation recital to practice for.
One day several of us music majors were in our “lounge”, a small cloak room just off the hall. All music studying and activity took place in a small frame building which housed the drama school and the music school. On this particular day we were chatting and smoking when someone said they smelled something burning and not our cigarettes! I went down the hall where the smell was stronger, entered the the empty theatre, and saw smoke coming from behind the curtain! I want back to the music office and told Mrs Waters to call the fire department. Folks didn’t want to believe me and had to go look for themselves. By that time the entire stage was ablaze and we started removing all the valuable instruments which included pianos, violins, and all sorts of instruments.
We pushed pianos down the street to a nearby building, Alumni Gym, where our vaunted basketball team practiced and played.
The music department was without a home!

After the honeymoon.

The honeymoon was uneventful other than sight-seeing around Atlanta. After about 4 days we headed back. We had dated a lot at the Chi Omega House near the campus. It was sold to an investor who rented out rooms. The rooms were huge with 12 foot ceilings. On our return from our honeymoon, we rented one of the rooms. We cooked slept and in general lived in the one room. Remember it was campus life and neither one of us minded the quarters. We had a hotplate for a stove and a cooler with ice on the outside of the window for a fridge. Since we both had classes every day, we did not spend a lot of time in the room.
We stayed there that summer and I worked at a local lumber yard, Congleton’s Lumber. I was a yard hand, stacking lumber and cleaning up the yard. Before the end of the summer, the bosses put me to work with and old man, about 65 years of age. We built a mill house where they worked with finished lumber. Because the old man was a carpenter, I learned a lot about building from scratch. He and I did all the work. The boss told me when I left, I was the first musician he ever saw who would work.
When I was in the navy, I met a guy from Lexington by the name of Bob Bleidt. He was a clarinet player and had graduated from Henry Clay High school. I also met a guy, Vic Bloomfield from Winchester, Ky. He played piano by ear and could read chord symbols pretty well. This enabled me to try out the ear I thought I had. My ego swelled when I realized I could do what the “big” boys did when playing “jazz”. Without being hobbled by reading music, or having to have an organized musical group, “band”, I was able to play tunes that other people could recognize as long as I had a piano to play to. Vic provided the piano (when we could find one), and Bob organized a band out of the guys stationed at Berea. The one remarkable thing about the band was this. The navy has “happy hours” in which the sailors are provided entertainment of one kind or other. During the last semester we had a happy hour which featured our band. I was selected to play “ Gettin’ Sentimental”, the Tommy Dorsey theme song in front of 5-600 sailors. I was highly complemented. The next is difficult to explain. Bob wrote the arrangement we played.
He copied it off the record, using the piano to find the notes. The problem was the record player was a little slow which caused the notes to sound a half step to low. Instead of arranging in the key of “C”, a simple, easy to play key, he arranged it in the key of “B”, a most difficult key to play in. I had to practice very much to learn it in that key. It did make me learn a very strange key, which helped me later on.