To Mr. Smith

The kind of educator everyone deserves.

The Old Man himself.

It was cold, but I couldn’t feel it. I was too anxious.

There we were. Me, Noah, and Kate, standing on the Bridgeport High School football field with all the other school’s Drum Majors waiting for the announcement of our show’s score. Our senior marching band season had been an epic fail of defeats. We had lost every single competition to Trumbull high school with the exception of Cavalcade - which was our home show so it technically didn’t count. However, over the past three months we had gained on their score in every single competition, and our marching show, The Green Mill Lounge, got tighter and more exciting with every single performance. We knew we had a shot at redemption.

Listening to the speaker announce the winner for the smaller bands was agonizing. There was one announcement we cared about. Who had won the whole damn competition? Who had won the state championship? How did our season end? Glorious victory? Or crushing disappointment. Trumbull, or Norwalk?

The voice behind the speaker boomed

“And now, our class five band competitors and overall state championship winner…”

“In 5th place….Glastonbury”

“In 4th place…Waterbury”

“In 3rd place…North Ramsey”

“Annnnnnnnnd in 2nd place…..”

The silence stretched and every molecule in my body screamed for the announcer to say the right words.

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Marching Band & Mr. Smith

I can’t tell you exactly what it was like to have 4 years under Mr. Smith because most people don’t understand the nature of competitive marching band.

But I’ll give it a try.

Imagine 150-200 people running over a mile creating choreographed moving pictures across a football field for over ten minutes. For ten minutes 150 people have to know where they are supposed to be in relation to one another to form a moving picture. About a third of them are in costume waving different apparatuses like flags and swords and rifles in complicated spins, twirls, and dance moves, that’s the guard. The other 2/3rds of these people are playing music.

Yeah. Music. So while marching and sometimes running, most of the individuals on the field blow into brass tubes and create music that compliments the visuals on the field. All of these components mix into this massive feast of visual and audio splendor that is damn near transcendent if done right. 

Sound’s difficult right? Cool. Now imagine all of the participants are horny, anxious, insecure teenagers.

Enter Mr. Smith.

Horny. Anxious. Insecure. Teenagers.

The Old Man

Imagine an old drill sergeant with white hair and a hunch in his upper back. He is perpetually unimpressed and forever in need of coffee. When his gaze passes over you, you instinctively stiffen up and wonder about all the things you were doing wrong. I just played that note out of tune...and did I forget to erase the history on my internet browser? When you didn’t meet his expectations, his anger whipped out like a lash, and before you knew it, you were doing 25 pushups in front of the entire band in a pool of sweat and shame. The band as a whole rarely met his expectations. There were many pushups.

And yet, beneath all the gruff and yelling, there was a teacher who cared about you. As a freshman you’re mostly just terrified of the old man, but as an upperclassmen who has become used to the psychological whipping, you begin to recognize the genius behind the old man’s anger. He wanted you to get better. He knew you could get better. He was furious that you weren’t better. Through a mixture of fear and respect he made you better. It’s why he insisted you always do one more practice rep and why three hour practices often went a half hour longer than they were supposed to. Parents froze in the parking lot waiting for their kids to get out of band practice. 

Maybe there’s two things you really need to know.

1. In a practice room with a 150 talking teenagers he would merely lift his baton for silence. The moment that baton went into the air 150 voices would immediately shut up and 150 horns would raise to attention. 

2. If the man muttered the word, “good” after running a particular section of the marching show, you had probably played at a professional level of performance. That’s how rarely he said the word, “good.”

Mr. Smith had so much ludicrous fury at the fact that his students, yes, his 16 year old idiotic teenager students who had just learned to pour cereal then milk, weren’t operating at a professional level, that when you graduated high school and went into your local college music program, you didn’t realize how soft everyone else was. I have a friend who joined Boston College’s marching band program and quit after one season. Here’s his take, “It was a joke. Kids could barely raise their horns to the correct angle when at attention. I couldn’t deal with it.” Another two kids from the program joined the military after high school. When they visited Mr. Smith after surviving basic training, Mr. Smith asked how it went. They both shrugged and said, “Honestly, it wasn’t too different from band camp.”

God awful pushup form…I expect nothing less from a saxophone player.

Reflections from a Professional

I’ve been teaching high school the past 7 years of my life. I have created an after school strength & conditioning program that started with a squat rack in a hallway and then slowly built to a legitimate fifteen thousand dollar facility. I have helped dozens of kids lose weight and gain muscle. I have created annual school wide tournaments that alumni consistently return to. I routinely have the best advisory thanksgiving potluck in the school - more home cooked cultural food than we know what to do with. I have had multiple kids hand me letters thanking me for the impact I’ve made on their lives.

None of this holds a candle to what Mr. Smith has accomplished in his educational career.  

To this day I don’t know how he did what he did. Over 20 state championships won. Creating a culture of professionalism that leaked from the Marching band into three different jazz bands, two winter percussion programs, a winter guard program, and the infamous Norwalk Musical. The man never left the school. He was a tireless servant for music education and the possibility it brings. The number of music professionals from jazz artists to paid musicians to broadway stars to sound engineers to music educators that have come out of that program number in the thousands. When they say teachers change lives…Mr. Smith is the epitome of that phrase.

He was the only teacher I’ve ever successfully seen use anger as a way to show he cared. If his anger instilled fear his students, it was only because we didn’t understand that we didn’t just need to get better for ourselves, but we needed to get better for everyone around us. He made the world a better place with fury.

Which is why it pains me to recognize that he died in a car crash just last week.

The Funeral

I don’t know what Mr. Smith wanted to see at his funeral, but if he was able to look down on the scene from the other side of the abyss, I think he’d be hard pressed not to crack a smile.

Over 1,000 of us showed up in our green band jackets at Norwalk High School. Old friends reunited and reminisced over old marching photos stored in massive albums.  I got to meet up with students he had taught twenty years before I joined the marching program and we all had a laugh at the similar experiences we shared. The older generation told the younger generation we were soft because we didn’t have to deal with Mr. Smith when he was still drinking coffee. 

Them Green Jackets =)

In typical Norwalk Marching Band fashion, people brought a highly organized last minute alumni band together. Students from three different decades brought their horns to the high school and the current band director (also a former Smith Survivor) ran a half hour practice. 

A sea of green jackets filled the gymnasium and we settled in to watch the band play Canterbury Chorale. It was one of Smith’s favorite pieces. As the band began to play and the sound of the symphonic music washed over me I was transported back to the days when I was a high school kid sitting in concert with his best friends collectively creating the sounds that bonded us together.  I was struck with pride and profound sadness all at once. Pride in being part of something way bigger than myself, and sadness knowing the man who had created that thing was no longer here.

As the chorale ended and everyone stood to give a standing ovation, I found tears rolling down my cheeks. I smiled and looked around. I was far from the only one.

I ended up staying for the next two hours talking to as many people as I could about their experiences with Smith and sharing how he had impacted my own pursuit of professional education. Once most of the people had left, I got in my car and drove to the old parking lot in front of Andrew’s Field, the place were I had spent four years of my life marching on pavement, playing music, and creating some of the most important friendships of my life. I got out of my car, walked to center X, and for about 5 minutes I marched and played an imaginary trumpet. I went to attention, I did earsplitting hits, I mouthed band ten hut, HUT, and I let my high school band memories wash over me with the echo of past music ringing in my ears. A couple more tears leaked out as I left the field.

The entire weekend was an astounding time of remembrance. A reminder at the fragility of life and the impact a life can make. It reminded me that I what I am doing is important, and that I need to do it even better. I need to work a bit harder. I need to chase a bit faster. I need to be a bit more like the old man. Because every kid deserves a teacher like Mr. Smith.

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“ANNNNNNNNND IN SECOND PLACE………” The silence stretched out for what seemed a full year. Every muscle in my body coiled with adrenaline…and then I caught my band director’s eye on the other side of the track. He gave me a smile and a wink.

“TRUMBULL HIGH SCHOOL”

Which of course meant -

“AND IN FIRST PLACE. NORWALK HIGH SCHOOL. STATE CHAMPIONS!!!”

Of course we won. We took everything that old man had beat into us and made a marching band comeback students would talk about for years to come. 

Feet. TOGETHER! Shoulders. BACK! Chins. UP! Eyes. WITH PRIDE! Where are you from? NORWALK!

Words to live by. 

Thank you for everything Mr. Smith.