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Ending on a High Note
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Howland band director Nancy Moore gets a standing ovation at the last concert of Moore's career. She will be retiring at the end of the year.
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Howland band director Nancy Moore wipes tears away sitting next to her husband, Dennis. They listen to heartfelt words of students, colleagues and friends at the last concert of Nancy's career. She will be retiring at the end of the year. Tuesday May 12, 2009
Retiring Howland band director Nancy Moore will miss many things — especially the students.
By WILLIAM K. ALCORN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
Nancy Moore is a born teacher.
“I get all my inspiration from the kids,” said Moore, who is retiring as director of bands at Howland High School at the end of the school year after a 35-year teaching career.
Moore, who has been head band director at Howland since 2002 and was assistant director of bands for one year before that, said she once introduced music from the Renaissance period (the 14th to the 17th centuries) to her junior high school general music students — and they liked it.
“Who knew?” she asked.
She recalled another time when talking to junior high students about music in the Baroque period and one of that period’s composers, George F. Handel. A Chinese student raised his hand and asked, “When are we going to get to Scarlatti?”
“I was stunned,” she said.
Domenico Scarlatti was an Italian composer during the Baroque period of the 1600s and 1700s, as was Handel, a German-English composer whose works include the “Messiah.”
Those are the kind of memories that are making retiring after 35 years such a tough experience for Moore.
“I got to teach a subject — music — that has immediate tangible results in the form of musical performances. I’ll miss the live music,” she said.
“I learned you have to laugh every day. You can’t take yourself or what you are teaching too seriously,” she said.
“Mostly, I’ll miss the kids — they all really want to be good. They just don’t all know the path to get there, and I’ll miss their senses of humor,” Moore said.
She said an incident at summer band camp at Grove City College in 2008 still makes her chuckle.
Moore said she didn’t know about it at the time, but some of the boys brought a plastic swimming pool into their dorm and set up a spa. It was a closely guarded secret that she later learned about.
“I have a saying with the students, ‘Guilty or not guilty?’ At the 2009 band banquet, a student approached me and said: ‘Regarding the swimming pool at band camp, that would be a guilty.’
“I have mixed emotions about retiring. It was really hard coming back to school after spring break. I stopped my car on the way to work and sobbed. I feel like I’m turning a page of my life,” she said.
Reared in Howland’s Bolindale area, Nancy, 56, is the oldest of the four children of Doris and the late Kenneth Young.
“Our parents thought our education was the most important thing in their lives,” Moore said.
The Young siblings all graduated from college, and three of them are musicians and music teachers, and several of their children are also musicians and teachers.
Only Howland’s fifth head band director, Moore began her public school teaching career in January 1975 at Pymatuning Valley Middle School near Andover, and has taught in Howland schools for 32 years.
She graduated from Howland in 1970, where she played in the band and was also a band majorette.
Her final spring concert and symphonic band concert was May 12 at Howland High School. The program also featured student speakers and a piano solo with the symphonic band played by Thomas Solich, a former student.
Moore said she is particularly proud that the Symphonic Band has received superior ratings at the Ohio Music Education Association the past two years.
The Howland Jazz Fest, at 7 p.m. Thursday at the high school, features some of Moore’s former students including her son, Chris, on trumpet; her sister, Jill Redmond, on trombone; Tyler Husosky on percussion; and the former Miss Ohio, Amanda Beagle, and her husband, Craig Raymayley and their group, Bel Duetto.
The concert offers cabaret seating, water and dessert. Tickets are $5 at the door.
“I think retiring is going to be a process. It takes all four seasons to get through something traumatic until you are OK again,” she said.
Moore’s retirement recovery plan doesn’t, however, include sitting on the couch and putting her feet up.
She said she wants to travel and will be on the beach in Hawaii during summer band camp. Moore said she is going to send some of the sand to Howland’s new director of bands, Greg Rezabek, who is her assistant.
“I’m really glad my friend and colleague [Rezabek] got the job. I wish him well,” she said.
Other plans include attending a performance of the Clermont Northeastern High School near Cincinnati, where her son, Chris, is director of bands. The Moores’ daughter, Alexis, is a veterinary intern planning to become a veterinarian.
Also, Moore said, “I told my dad I would take care of my mom. I take that seriously.”
Part of taking care of her mother includes a trip to Disney World to watch Chris’ band perform at the Magic Kingdom.
Moore also plans to use her bachelor’s degree in music therapy and become a freelance music therapist. She said she will continue giving clarinet lessons and is giving serious thought to starting a youth choir.
“What God put me on earth for is to teach music,” she said.
alcorn@vindy.com