Appreciation: Edward M. Ward (1941-2023)

Summer band camps. Marching band at high school football games in the fall and concerts at area grade schools chomping down on Big Macs at Mcdonald’s during lunch or hot dogs soon afterwards.

Solo contests every spring and concerts in December before Christmas vacation and May before the three-month-long summer break. End of the year pool parties. Even a performance I wanted no part of in seventh-grade school play during the 1982-83 school year which felt like I had signed a contract without actually reading it.

None of this would have happened had I not joined the band at St. Louise de Marillac School (1958-2020)in La Grange Park, Ill in 1980 from fourth to eighth grade when I graduated in May 1984.

St. Louise band directors Ed Ward and Louise Thorson.

The band was under the direction of music teachers Edward M. Ward and Louise Thorson (1952-2018). Of course, we never called them by their first names. We always addressed them as Mr. Ward and Ms. Thorson much the way we called all the teachers there as Mr., Mrs., Ms. or when it came to the nuns “Sister.”

For almost five years my band uniform would be blue slacks, a white shirt, a yellow blazer band jacket and a black tie, if I remember correctly. In 8th grade those ties were called “dickies”. Anyone in my class who had yet to grow up (I’m willing to bet some of them still have yet to grow up four decades later) and whose mind was always in the gutter would laugh when hearing the word “dickie.” The childish way certain classmates I knew who laughed hearing the word (they know who they are) was equivalent to how Joey Tribiani (Matt LeBlanc) would laugh every time Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) said she needed to call her baby’s pediatrician, Dr. Weiner, in “Friends” (1994-2004).

My introduction to the music world, so to speak, began in fourth grade with our class being required to play the flutophone to perform with the band during a spring performance. I don’t remember what made me want to join the band or why but somehow upon meeting Mr. Ward I wound up picking an instrument called the cornet, a fatter version of the trumpet which was the only thing that stood out in terms of appearance. So far as I know the cornet still churned out the same notes as any other, assuming the one playing it can a “play” the music and not the notes.

I’ve said in a couple blogs I wrote about my time at St Louise that a lot if not all the teachers who taught me possessed one trait that made them stand out from the rest. In the case of Mr. Ward and Ms. Thorson I cannot put my finger on just one thing.

I will always remember the glasses he had on those five years. I never saw him with them off until I saw his obituary picture in August this year. He and his wife, Dale, ran The Bandstand from 1973 to 1996 in Brookfield, Illinois where I lived for a time before moving to La Grange Park. I still recall the big sign displayed outside the store near the train tracks in downtown Brookfield that made the place somehow stand out like it was the town staple. The store was also where I oftentimes went to practice during spring break for the upcoming solo contests held every year.

I know many students Mr. Ward taught since 1959 at several schools in the Chicago area will attest to how he always cracked jokes. In my case it’s not his jokes I remember though. I recall his wrath more so than his humor much the way I recall Ms. Thorson being furious at my lousy horn playing during a Thursday rehearsal in seventh grade than anything else.

My first year at summer band camp, Mr. Ward, who not only doubled as being a music teacher but also the camp’s director, introduced himself to all of us students who were from several schools throughout the Chicago area saying, “My name is Mr. Ward. Also known by some as the mean guy.”

Mr. Ward wasn’t lying either. There were a few times at band camp where I saw him disciplining a student. Other times during that week I would hear him storming through the boy’s dormitory screaming at students to stop blaring out their own music and start practicing on the pieces they were going to be playing that Friday morning at Six Flags Great America in Gurnee, Ill.

I won’t deny there were times I was the subject of his wrath throughout those five years. When Mr. Ward signaled with his baton for us all to have horns up to begin playing one Thursday afternoon rehearsal, he immediately said “Horns down” glaring at me telling the band, “We have to wait for Joe Stumpo to get along with the program.”

While practicing for the solo contest in spring 83’ Ms. Thorson complained to Mr. Ward how I developed a bad habit of not keeping my ring finger on the third valve of the cornet. Mr. Ward told Ms. Thorson, acting like as though I wasn’t in the room (but I was) saying “Well maybe we need to either glue or nail his fingers to the cornet then to stop that.”

Anyone else would have taken that comment with less than a grain of salt if he or she even cared. My being 12-years-old at the time, I thought he was serious.

When Mr. Ward asked us band members in the seventh and eighth grade if we wanted to be in the school play during the 82-83 school year called “The Ed Sullivan Show”, I had no idea it’d involve me playing again in a band. I ended up saying yes simply because my other fellow band members said yes and I didn’t want to hear from my parents saying how they heard others in the band joined the play and ask me why didn’t I join them?

I considered the seventh grade school year (82-83) at St. Louise to be my worst alongside fourth grade. The 82-83 school year was when my increasingly negative rebel without a cause attitude ran rampant alienating all the “goodie-goodie” classmates I knew and preferred the company of the bad boys in class who if a teacher looked real closely at their heads of hair they might find the numbers “666” engraved on their skulls. Our 84’ class had the reputation at St. Louise of being the most problematic.

That negative attitude I developed that year showed when it came to my being in the band as I very rarely took the cornet out to practice other than on those weekly Thursday afternoon rehearsals.
 

My solo contest medals.

Of the five solo contests I took part in those five years, 1983 was the year and ONLY year I got third place. I scored first place in the solo contests held in 1980, 81’ and 82’ and then went out with a bang my final year in spring 84’ with yet another first-place medal the year I graduated.

The night of our final performance in late April 1984 a month before we graduated, Mr. Ward recognized us eighth grade band students. I don’t remember what it was I got from Mr. Ward and Ms. Thorson for being in the band except when prior to announcing my name to the audience, he described me as “a quiet man.” He wasn’t far from the truth. It is the quiet people you have to watch out for you know.

Today, whenever I watch the film, "Mr. Holland's Opus" (1995), I find it hard not to be reminded of Mr. Ward watching Richard Dreyfuss playing a dedicated high school band director. Looking back on some of those somewhat uncomfortable times with Mr. Ward and Ms. Thorson on their bad days, I understand now the methods to their madness and why they sometimes got upset with me for not taking the band seriously. Their reasoning is because they wanted us to be as passionate about music and playing in the band as they were teaching us. They wanted us to play to the best of our abilities and they knew full well I along with everyone else were more than capable of doing that.



Which explains their disappointment when they learned I had no plans to join the band at Bishop Lynch, the high school I would be attending in Dallas, Texas in the fall of 1984 freshman year. Little did I know that Mr. Ward’s influence was not just relegated to the schools he taught music in Chicago. His influence extended to Texas when I learned that Joe Cardinale, the band director at Bishop Lynch knew Mr. Ward.

I confess I almost did join the band at BL. My joining the high school band lasted less than the four days George Costanza (Jason Alexander) spent in his job at Play Now in “Seinfeld” (1989-1998). There is even a yearbook picture of me with the band in the Freshman yearbook that proves my two-day involvement.

I would have stayed in the band from 84-88. What turned me off was how I’d be required to show up by 6 a.m. every morning five days a week to marching band practice for the weekly football games and pep rallies. I had enough of marching band practices and performances at band camp playing at Six Flags Great America and at St. Joseph High School in Westchester, Ill. for five years.

I couldn’t take another four years of having to keep up with everyone else marching left and right, having to play the music looking at the small booklets attached to my cornet while trying to pay attention to the conductor. I’ve never been a multitasker. The powers-that-be in my IT helpdesk job I’ve been doing going on 27 years now will attest to that!

The only positive thing I could have gotten out of being with the BL band is gazing at the brigade drill team Friday nights whose over the knee black skirted outfits I found domineeringly sexy (black and white were our high school colors). At one point during the sixty years the high school’s been open the drill team actually wore black low-heeled boots – the kinds one would find worn by a dominatrix before the drill team program went with the white go-go dancer boots.

Just because I didn’t continue my music career in high school so to speak doesn’t mean others didn’t. After posting my blog about the “whiplash” moment I had with Ms. Thorson in 7th grade, class of 84’ alum Michele Santiago (1970-2022) posted a comment on my Facebook page on her playing in the band at Nazareth Academy high school in La Grange Park, Ill.

“I recall competing against St. Joe’s / IHM at State of the Art band competition, and I stood in line with Fenwick / Nazareth while both Mike Alberico and Roger Veome both stared me down with their horns in parade lock position, trying to psyche me out (all of us played baritone for concert band),” Michelle wrote. “Fen/Naz beat St. Joe’s/ IHM in 1987 AND 1988. Yeap— I had major solos both years.”

Many of the of teachers, administrators, priests and nuns I had at St. Louise are now one with “The Force” that include Sisters Petronia, Cresentine, and Julitta, Father Edward Borisewicz (1925-1990), Father John Keating (1934-1998), science teacher and later principal Arlene Fencl (1933-2021), 6th grade teacher Violet Zetlitz (1932-2013), 7th and 8th grade teacher Joyce Allen, Ms. Thorson, Deacon Michael McLynn (1921-2021) and now Mr.Ward.

Their passings (I don’t like using the word “died”) prove how as I’ve gotten older I’m reaching that age where life stops giving us things and starts taking them away. If you don’t realize it now, you will.

In the case of Mr. Ward I do believe one thing is certain. Somewhere among the heavens he is still sharing his passion for teaching music, this time to probably several young angels from grade schools who went before their time. He, and probably along with Ms. Thorson and maybe even Michele are conducting a large orchestra bigger than any of the ones music composers John Williams and Ennio Morricone ever led.

I’m sure Mr. Ward is up there cracking jokes during rehearsals only to be slightly stressed on the day of the big performances the band is set to play that night in front of the Son of God, Saint Peter, the 11 apostles and God himself. No doubt those student angels will wonder who is more stressed. Their fellow band students or Mr. Ward.

In this case I can’t blame Mr. Ward for being stressed out. What band director wouldn’t want to make damned certain his orchestra is playing up to their absolute best especially if the supreme being in the audience happens to be the Almighty?

©10/10/23