REFLECTIONS ON A LONG AND BLESSED LIFE NO 34 COLLEGE DAYS MUSIC

 It is a great pleasure to recall music from earlier days of one’s life-and I have lots of wonderful memories of the music of 1945-50, the years I was in college. Being a Texan I carried with me the classic country western melodies of “I’m An Old Cowhand”, “The Yellow Rose of Texas”, “Pistol Packin Mama”, ”Cotton-eyed Joe” and all the rest.

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Being in love left me wide open to be stirred by “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”, I’ll See You in My Dreams”, “You Never Know Just How Much I Love You”, “Sentimental Journey”, etc, etc. I never had a portable radio or record player but managed to hear all those great popular songs by Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee, Glen Miller, Perry Como, etc., etc.

Religious and classical music were new to me in those days and I am forever grateful for those who introduced me to them. I sang in the college choir under Director “Tante” Beck (who let me join the choir because he remembered singing with my father in college 25 years earlier). He even asked me to become the Manager of the Choir Tour and in my sophomore year I arranged for an on-road choir tour of some 10 days that took us to many parts of the Midwest. Of special blessing was what we simply called our Mass Choir because it had well over 100 voices and was directed by Dr. “Kelly “ Waldschmidt. We did Handel’s “Messiah” and Bach’s “St. Matthew’s Passion”. This was accompanied by a full orchestra and professional soloist. Again, wonderful memories.

The student body at the time included an incredible number of musicians who helped shape Lutheran liturgy and music for the last 60 years. Thy included Richard Hillert whose liturgies are sung every Sunday now in hundreds of Lutheran churches, Carl Schalk whose choir compositions continue to be top-sellers, “Pinger” Pelz who for many years was chief organ instructor at Bethany College, Ralph Schultz who continues to compose and direct orchestra and church masterpieces, etc., etc. And I will include my wife Jane in that list. She was a top organist among that elite group. (Later she made the switch from multiple rank massive pipe organs to playing the portable knee-pumped little instruments we carried from chapel to chapel in Hong Kong.)

Surrounded by all this great stuff I was an abysmal failure. After 4 unsuccessful years of piano instruction during my high school years I kept up the poor piano performance for 2 more years at college. At that point the piano teachers were so frustrated by this non-practicing pianist that they turned me over to Dr. Carl Halter for instruction in playing the organ. To no-one’s surprise my inability to find time for practice resulted in my reaching my peak performance skill as being able to play “Glory Be To Jesus” and forgetting about the foot pedals!

So I gratefully carry all that musical heritage with me and am still stirred by great music and its incomparable power to enrich my life and to help me experience the deepest emotions of faith and life.