A Daughter’s Swan Song to The Band Director

How do you sum up 55 years into five to ten minutes? This is a question I’ve been asking myself over the past few days, and to be completely candid, I still have no idea, but I am going to try. Dad once told me that I was a compelling speaker, so I guess I am going to put that to the test here today.

Pericles once said, “What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”

I don’t have to tell you all what a great person he was because you are all showing me how great he was simply by coming here to celebrate his life. Whether he was a fellow band mate, a teacher, neighbor, or friend to you, it is clear to me as I look out into the sea of faces before me what he meant to you. To many of you, he was Mr. McKee or Bill, and maybe to some of you, he was even William. To me, though, he was simply Daddy…

He was the man who tucked me in at night when I was scared of whatever boogie monster was going to come for me at night; he was the man who hung the moon and stars for me as I toddled around after him; he was the first man I ever loved…

I spent many hours hanging out in his office in the band room at Bellevue while he had Saturday morning rehearsals, so many in fact, that I used to know his security code to the school board’s office. Some of you may even remember those days. I know I do… I remember you, your names, and I’ve heard stories about many of you. Although many of you were his students, he cared about you enough to talk about you, even years later.

Sometimes, after those Saturday rehearsals, he would take me to the Zoo, where we would always go watch the Gibbons – the loud, screaming, swinging monkeys in the cage outside the Ape House. I remember conning him into buying me a wax lion out of the machine once. We always went to see Tom in his cage in the Cat House, and we always went to see my favorites – the elephants. I would practice making elephant sounds, likely to no avail, but I could imitate the Gibbons pretty well.

At home, Dad was always a fun Dad. He spent hours playing “Creepmousy” with us. Creepmousy was a tickle game, where he would start moving his hands toward us slowly while saying, “Creeeeepmousy, creeeeeeepmousy, creeeepmousy”, and as finally catching us, saying, “All the way to the top of the house,” and tickling us until our sides hurt from laughing so much. He used to make up stories or sing funny words to songs for us. Of course, having him home all summer was a treat, and we would load up in the car or truck and make the annual trek to “The Mountains”. This was when we would go up to Western North Carolina to the land that time and technology forgot. There was no television, but there was always a Big Wheel for me, and we would spend afternoons out tubing on the Toe River. I was always in Dad’s lap until Steve came along, and every time we would go over some rapids, we would all yell, “Butts up!”

As I grew older, I began to get a little bit jealous of Steve and the students he taught, and I told him I wanted more attention, so he was the man who took me on my first date – a father-daughter dinner at Anderton’s! We would have a father-daughter date night about once a month, and it was always to someplace fancy. I loved those nights. I was a pretty headstrong kid, and I could sometimes get a little mouthy with Mom, so Dad was kind of a buffer between us, and those nights gave me the opportunity to tell him what was on my mind. Of course, by this time, I was playing French horn (thankfully, Dad was NOT my horn teacher – he never could get a good sound on it, something about having the wrong embouchure or something), and I was becoming more and more advanced in my playing.

Soon, I was one of his students. I was not supposed to call him Dad at school, only Mr. McKee, but somehow, it always came out, “Uhhhh.” I was usually not ready to get up for school, and Dad would come and try to wake me up by telling me some silly story like there was a whale in the neighbor’s yard or a train in the river or something like that. Unfortunately, these tales never seemed to work, and we would have to rush to school so he wouldn’t be late. Most mornings he would come down the hill to the parking outside the band room and whip into that first spot on two wheels. About once a month or so, he would even bump into the building, which always caused me to laugh at him. Once, I was in a bad mood about whatever the big emergency was at that time, and he whipped in and by some miracle, he didn’t hit the building. When I told him that I wished he had, he backed up the car, put it in drive, and hit the building! Anything to make me smile.

From the many, many Saturdays trailing him around the band room at Bellevue, to years later when I was a member of his band, marching in the St Patricks Day parade in Dublin, and all of the sunburns and broken hearts in between, he was there…

As time went on and I grew up and moved out to join the Navy, Dad was always there. In Boot Camp, he was present in our Pass and Review Drill, since I wrote the field show on graph paper because I’d seen him do it so many times.

Every new duty station for me was a new adventure for him, and he and Mom visited me in every single one of them. The first time they came to Italy, we were driving from the airport in Rome and we were in a small town called Latina, between Rome and Naples, and he saw a sign that said “Elettricitta” and he was quite taken with the fact that he could read it! Mom made me stop at every crumbling building, and if you’ve ever been through the Italian countryside, you know they are everywhere, so she could take pictures. I told Dad to just tell everyone back home that it was Caesar’s summer house, because no one would know the difference anyway.

As we proceeded through the many rooms at the Uffizi in Florence or the Galleria in Venice, Mom trailing behind, we would always have to get to a place where we would sit and wait for her to catch up. We would people watch and make comments about them, and he would always give me a short art history lesson, so when Mom caught up, it would sound like we were actually doing something productive.

 Dad didn’t hesitate when he jumped into the role of GramBill when I adopted Abby after we lost her father in 2021, and he always reminded me of his 11 to 1 rule when I was upset about something she did that she wasn’t supposed to or something she didn’t do that she was supposed to do – 11 atta girls for every “you’re a jerk”. Looking back, I wonder if that’s why I got so many “atta girls” growing up…

I’m a huge believer in energy and signs, and I know that his energy surrounds us all here today because each of us is carrying some of that energy within ourselves. I was in London the day that Dad laid down his baton for the last time. I listened to Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman perform “Con te Partiro” while I broke down and sobbed. Later that night, while walking through Trafalgar Square, we came upon a street busker who was singing “Con te Partiro”, and I knew then that Dad was telling me he was at peace, that I made the right decision when I decided to go ahead with the trip I’d been planning for well over a year, and that he was always with me… wherever I will go.

Dad was a weaver of melodies, a shaper of emotions, and a mentor who tuned not only the band but also our souls. Though the symphony of his life has reached its final movement, the final chord has sounded, and the baton rests upon the stand, the music Dad made will continue to echo in our hearts forever.

Dad, you will always be my Superman, and I miss you and love you. In the words of Johnny Cash, “Life and love go on, let the music play.”