My Musical Dad

Today would have been Dad's 95th birthday, and he would have gotten a kick out of it. Imagine me such an old man, he'd say, with his trademark grin.

I've been thinking a lot about Dad and music as I practice for the concert next weekend. How he made sure Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninoff was blaring from the stereo, about his excitement finding the "Suite from Spartacus" in a bargain bin.

Dad grew up on church and popular music; classical music he found on his own. He never grew tired of telling me how: It was watching "Fantasia" that turned him on (and not in the way that my generation got turned on during "Fantasia"). He heard Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Symphony play Beethoven's "Pastorale" and Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain" — and music was never the same.

In fact, Dad was on a committee tasked to find the money to fly the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestra to a music educator's conference in Russia. Since the invitation was unexpected, he and the other committee members had only a few months to finance the trip. Dad used all his sales personality and charm on business and civic leaders — "our budgets were committed months ago," they demurred — and even on the U.S. State Department, the closest he came to a bull's eye. They were going to charter a military plane for us — quite a feat during those Cold War days.

In the end Dad didn't quite pull it off, but it gave him lots of stories to tell. Now Dad is gone, so I tell the stories for him.

(Photo: Walt Disney Pictures. Don't get me for copyright infringement; this is for my dad!)