Commitment

            Isn’t it strange that the term used for having mentally ill folks involuntarily placed into a facility for treating their condition is the same term used to describe the quality most looked for in a band student.  I have taught quite a few of you that should have been committed.  I have also been fortunate enough to teach a great number of you who were truly committed to band.  Let me cite a few examples:

            Band directors understand that contagious people need to stay home.  We may not like it, but we understand it.  I have had dozens of folks come to a game just before halftime, march the show, and return home to vomit.  The most extreme of these was William Pleasants.  He had his appendix out one week, and marched at a contest the next weekend.  The doctor told him that, as long as he could stand the pain, he could give it a go.  I feel certain that William pushed the doctor to reach that decision.

            Band directors understand that injured people sometimes can’t walk.  We may not like it, but we understand it.  I have had some fairly gruesome injuries to band members while doing the band thing.  Erica Simmons breaking her leg during an indoor guard performance was perhaps the worst I ever saw.  Really close behind that in “gruesomeness” was a leg injury to Ian Johnson.  We were on the parking lot and kids yelled at me that Ian had gone down.  When I got to the back of the lot, he was lying on the ground with his leg splayed out beside him.  It was then that I noticed his knee was facing the wrong direction.  After the ambulance hauled him off, it was a couple of days before I saw him again.  His leg was in a huge cast but Ian told me he would be in a walking cast in a month and not to fill his spot in the show.  He said he would be ready in 6 weeks for the first contest.  I thought he was crazy (see first paragraph).  He made it on the field and, as memory serves, marched all 5 contests that year.  Guts….

            Band directors understand when people have to move away. We may not like it, but….. yeah.  When the Sifri family moved after my first year at Houston, I locked myself in my office and cried for an hour.  I have had kids who tried to stay a few days or weeks longer to meet a particular performance obligation but, at least twice, I had kids who lived with other band folks for a whole year so that they could be with us and graduate from Houston.  My second year at Houston, that girl was Angie Ciuki.  I believe her family moved to Hong Kong.  My last year, Samantha Morrison stayed with an assortment of band folks when her mom moved to Mississippi.  I can’t imagine having either of these 2 young ladies gone their senior years and, while we are not in the business of breaking up families, the benefit to all of us who got to spend more time with them was huge. 

            Sometimes I needed everybody in the program on the same page and committed to helping fill a need or right a wrong.  The best example of this came about several years ago when the school system changed a rule.  The way it used to work was that somebody in administration had an ill informed and relatively crazy idea.  Rather than talk to those most effected, they just make a new rule.  This particular rule changed Spring trip policy such that, if you missed 2 days of school, it had to be a Friday and a Monday.  This would accommodate the schedules of cheerleaders and pom peeps but no one else.  The result was that we would have to cancel our Spring trip as our performance schedule would not fit that parameter.  I argued the craziness of this policy but to no avail.  Here is where commitment comes in.  All of the parents in the band got together and formed a calling tree.  Then, every board member and the superintendent got a phone call (“pre” text days) every 5 minutes.  Halfway through day 2, John Aitken came down and said, “Call off the dogs, ya’ll can travel whenever you need to.  The new policy is dead.”   Yep, never underestimate the ability of large numbers of parents to irritate people to near death…. if it is for their kids. 

            And finally, band directors understand that not everybody is a talented musician.   Trying to fix that situation is our job.  Still, the band members I admire the most are those who are extremely talented but still want to share that talent with other band students.  Some of those “others” make sounds more akin to animal mating noises than to music.  It takes true commitment (as well as patience, citizenship, tolerance and understanding) not to walk out of a rehearsal when you can play it correctly the first time but some of the less fortunate can’t play it on time 20.  The example set by people like Will Caviness, Jackie Young, Gloria Kwak, Jack Mo, David Ford, Rachel Pressler and a hundred others means much to the program and to those who need the example.  We would not have made it without the selflessness of these people.

            I know this was not the quasi-amusing post you have become accustomed to.  It was on my mind and it is always best to get things out of my head.