One of Many!!!

If you don’t know or never met Rachel Lin, you have missed out on a real opportunity.  She was my Drum Major for a couple of years (sharing the job with Lara Pitts her Sr. year). Rachel was both our first chair clarinet player and the best violinist Houston ever turned out (sorry Michael, she wins the tiebreaker on cuteness).  Rachel was often my most efficient problem solver and, from the day I first met her in middle school, she spent quite a lot of time and energy mothering the likes of Max Docauer, Jack Mo, and other known criminals.  Talented and dedicated describes a bunch, if not the majority, of the kids I got to teach at Houston.  Rachel stood apart as special and (now) memorable because of a host of other, sometimes lesser-appreciated qualities.  

            Rachel could be picked on.  Most pretty, popular girls don’t handle this so well.  For example: It used to be that, when we went to All West, televisions got switched off in the rooms to keep kids from watching pay channels (porn).  This was obviously before the day of broadband internet service.  For years, kids would pile in my room and watch a suitable movie from among those on the pay movie channels (it was a different time!). One night, they all came up to watch the movie “Ring”.  For those of you unfamiliar with the plot, a summary is: after watching a disturbing video, a person would get a phone call where someone whispered “seven days”.  Seven days later, they died a gruesome death.  After the movie was over, Rachel went back to her room before the other kids.  We waited about 2 or 3 minutes and then called her room to say, “seven days”.  The phone rang forever and finally someone knocked on my door.  It was Rachel saying, “You guys are not funny at all!!!” Still she smiled.

            Rachel sure seemed to solve a lot of problems for me before I had to deal with them.  Once, also at All West, all the kids were just getting up for breakfast.  One of the most endearing and likable band folks you would ever hope to meet, went out into the hallway in a state of some undress to fetch a USA Today.  His roommates, obviously less endearing than he, locked him out of the room.  I missed all of this as I was in my own room getting dressed.  When the young man realized he was locked out and to some extent naked, he didn’t panic…. He just went to Rachel’s room for help!  My first clue that something was wrong was when I heard Rachel POUNDING on the door to the guy’s room.  By the time I got there, Rachel had all the other boys seated on a bed and was giving them a good chewing out about growing up.  All I had to do was throw in a “….Yeah, what she said” and close the door on my way out.  Kids not only seemed to know to go to Rachel for help, they listened to her much more intently than to me.  

            Rachel was sneaky.  For a while, she had a boyfriend that her mom and dad didn’t know about. She let me in on the ruse because she was using band as a cover.  She would tell me that, if her mom called, please tell her we got through unloading equipment at midnight instead of 10:00.  Sometimes you have to trust a kid’s judgement.  I was also told at the debriefing that seniors get from me (just before graduating) that she and other band kids would make rude hand gestures to each other during Wind Ensemble practice when I wasn’t watching.  Probably hard to understand why I find this amusing, but I do!

            I offer the preceding to establish that Rachel wasn’t a perfect child and didn’t distance herself from other band kids by being preachy. What she was, was always prepared, always caring, always thoughtful, always supportive, and always a friend to everyone in my program.  It is difficult to describe the feeling you get when someone like Rachel Lin is graduating and moving on.  Had it not been for my oldest daughter, Faith, coming into the program the next year, I might have retired much earlier.  

            This all came to mind recently as I was speaking to a group of band directors at a band clinic about getting kids to buy into their band programs.  I told them that you have to have at least one student who (1) “gets it” when it comes to what you expect, (2)is well liked by the other kids, and (3)will have your back when another kid goes off about how much you resemble the anti-Christ. I told them that having one such kid would make it possible for directors to band direct without looking over their shoulders.  I told them that just one such kid who was happy with band would be contagious such that others would get a good case of happiness.  While she was here, Rachel was one of those kids.  Though I had the good fortune to teach many like I just described, I really hope every band director gets the chance to teach at least one Rachel Lin.

A person doing his or her best becomes a natural leader, just by example.  – Joe DiMaggio