Thank you, Mr. Smith

At the subtle flick of my wrist, the band is mine and mine alone, the growing crescendos of Gustav Holst’s “Jupiter” manifesting itself under my ladder. As drum major of the Pride of Temple City Marching Band, the one and only reason I’m where I am now is because of my elementary and middle school band director, for he must have believed in something far greater than seventh-grade me. This, I believe was his shining trait, and this, I believe was what made him the best director. 

He made an effort to reach out to every single student, knowing everyone by name and extending casual hello’s in the halls. He was the teacher everyone screamed his name for passing by during lunch. Over quarantine, he never stopped believing in the pursuit of music, establishing a Music Mentors program for high school students, including myself, to teach his elementary beginning band students one-on-one. Seeing them enter high school with me for my finale, my senior year, is a physical reminder of the impact he had on me and all those he believed in. 

My father succumbed to cancer on June 21, 2013. Today, June 21, 2023, ten years later, I write this on the anniversary of the summer solstice and his death date. Ever since that day, the longest day of the year seems especially dim. I never seemed to understand the weight of this event and how it affected me later in life, being only six when he passed. All I remember was my mother throwing me into piano class, her excuse: to honor my dad’s legacy as a musician, but the real reason: to distract first-grade me from the severity of the incident, which was never again spoken about. 

Like any child thrown into piano classes during elementary school, I hated Friday afternoon group lessons. I never practiced, but by some miracle, music in its entirety–playing, performing, and theory–came easy to me. I spent the next two and a half years halfheartedly breezing through my piano classes, enjoying music only to a fault. Though but a blip in my past, I remember picking up the flute and joining my school band in fourth grade, believing that my musical background might as well not go to waste and to continue it during school. 

Only a year had passed when we got the news that we would be getting a new director, consistency seeming to be a common theme absent from my life. After only a few practices with him, I began seeing the person that future me would soon miss to no end. Though only my second year on the instrument, he began seating me with the upperclassmen, believing in the potential my background provided in this new woodwind realm. 

This was a common theme that occurred all throughout elementary school and through middle school where he continued mentoring me and my class. Because of him, I decided to try out for drum major of our middle school’s marching band. To this day, I still don’t understand why he believed in, perhaps, the shyest applicant to hold the most vocally demanding role in the band, but his belief carried me to become the drum major of my high school marching band, forever impacted by the effect he had on my musical and life journey.

He cared and he believed, truly making the effort to affect the lives of each and every student who had the blessing to study under his direction. This, I believe, and thus, he believed. Thank you for believing in me, Mr. Smith.