When I first came to Houston H.S., the budget for band, provided solely by the band booster organization, was much less than it had been at Shadowlawn Middle School (my previous job). Houston boosters had been raising about $25,000 a year and I had proposed a budget of $125,000 a year. This led to much wailing and gnashing of teeth amongst the parent led band boosters which, eventually, led to a new group of booster officers. The “big money” raising parents after this transition were Molly McNally, Richard Hynes, and Sharon Kowalkie (Scheel family matriarch). Before I came to Houston, the boosters mostly raised money by selling stuff. They sold fruit, light bulbs, pizza kits, candy, had bake sales, etc…. I encouraged them to think bigger and maybe try to raise money without selling stuff (to parents) that they mostly didn’t want.
Molly became quite successful soliciting businesses around town to donate big-ticket items for an auction. We then put together either a dinner or (off campus) a wine and cheese party and asked community members to come bid on the stuff she had collected. On our first effort, we made about as much as the boosters had raised in the previous year. Dick Hynes was my first introduction to a capital campaign where we would come up with a list of equipment needs and ask local philanthropists and businesses to either buy some stuff or donate to the purchase of some stuff. This was how we got our first set of real drums and our first vibraphone and real marimba. Side note: about 3 weeks after getting the vibraphone, either Steve Stires, Jason Hartsfield, or Kevin Moore flipped it out of the back of a moving pickup truck while moving it and, though it still played, much of the new was worn off!
Sharon volunteered to be the coordinator for our first Rock-A-Thon. For those reading who are unfamiliar with the premise, we asked kids to solicit pledges or outright donations from folks based on the kid rocking in a rocking chair for 12 hours straight. We let them out of the chairs for 5 minutes every hour to either get a snack or go to the restroom. At the first Rock-A-Thon, the kids mostly played cards and board games. By the time I had left Houston, kids were bringing computer or video game consoles hooked up to big flat screen TV’s, watching multiple movies, and doing karaoke or listening to live bands. Still, for the most part, the more memorable moments at Rock-A-Thon involved more than the technology. I remember:
One year at Rock-A-Thon it snowed. During the five minute break, Renee Reyle, Katie Sauer and Miranda Lewis decided to strip to their underwear and run around the flagpole in front of the school to “see what that felt like”! Keep in mind, it was 2:00 a.m. The morons forgot to block the door open and it locked behind them. We were having the Rock-A-Thon in the P.E. gym and, when they didn’t show up in their chairs, I went looking. When I got to the band room, I saw a pile of clothes on the floor and heard banging on the outside door (old band room). Renee was yelling at me to let them in but not to look! Fearing for my job should anyone ever find out what was going on, I kicked the door open and ran for the gym.
One year, we held Rock-A-Thon about one week after the Lord of the Rings movie, “Return of the King”, came out in theaters. I had a band kid who said they could get it for us to watch. While I was leery, I had grown used to Katie Eggleston’s mom providing new movies for us to watch as she worked for Malco. I thought this kid just had some connections. Not only were all the kids looking forward to this, I had some parents come who had put off seeing it in the theater to watch it free in the band room. The kid had burned the movie to a DVD and gave it to me to play. It was “Return of the King” all-righty…… with Russian subtitles. I had my entire band and many parents watching an illegal and pirated version of the movie. There is only one thing to do in that circumstance…… pass the popcorn!
Lots of little things:
1. Lonzi Pink’s mom guarding the door to keep folks inside.
2. Michael Wilson going to his office to sleep.
3. Lori Tingle video taping Kathy Tuberville asleep and snoring “Hard”.
4. A mom who showed up at 8:00 a.m. with 200 donuts (Rock-A-Thon ended at 7:00 a.m.).
5. Leaving at 7:00 a.m. (as the Rock-A-Thon ended) with Spencer Nesvick to go to the WTSBOA band director’s manadatory meeting in Jackson, TN.
6. The year it was canceled because of no water in the school and the kids still turned in donations in excess of what we had budgeted.
7. The worry on the faces of freshman parents as they dropped off their kids to spend the night and the joy on those same faces when their kids had survived!
8. Watching freshman boys eat free food like there was a global famine on the horizon…. and then turn green about 2:00 in the morning.
9. Telling “young love” that one person to a rocking chair is the maximum allowed.
10. Watching parents who volunteered to chaperone drift off to sleep one by one.
Just to show where the inspiration for a Rock-A-Thon came from, here is a picture of me, and some friends, from my first time in 1974. Yes, the rocking chair had been invented by 1974!
With all that is going on right now, I hope kids in band now get to experience these sorts of “bonding” type things. Very few people go back to a high school reunion to reminisce about conjugating verbs or solving the quadratic equation. But watching Spencer Lane sing Taylor Swift’s “Love Story”……… Priceless!!
