College...how it all started.

     I’m not certain just how many people can make the claim that “I have an anonymous benefactor”...but I can. This is one of the most amazing and wonderful things that ever happened to me, and it had a great deal to do with how I turned out in my life.

     It’s a great story. Let me tell it to you…

     In the last half of the first semester of my freshman year at the University of Colorado, I got really sick. I contracted mononucleosis, known back then as the dreaded “kissing disease”. (Ok, I know what you’re thinking…well, stop it right now because that’s not how I got it.) This was such a bad case that I was hospitalized and wasn’t able to complete my very first semester of college, which was going to turn out to be a true financial crisis in my life because that meant that I would lose my full-ride scholarship to the Music School. It was my trombone that got me that scholarship and I was truly in heaven…music all day long. I was in the marching band, the concert band, even sang in the choir, and – best of all, I was in the jazz band.

 
I remember when the musical legend Stan Kenton, came to Boulder to conduct a big band jazz clinic for us.  Wow, what a thrill that was!

     Sorry, I got excited there and got waaaaaaay off track…ok, back to my story.

     I had just enough money saved up to pay for one more semester of school, so after I was finally released from the hospital, I enrolled in what would have been my second semester but since I didn’t really complete my first one, I was really starting over. I also came to realize that what little money I had would soon be gone and that I would have to quit school in the spring and find a job somewhere back home in Aurora. My parents just didn’t have the money for college so it was going to be totally up to me. That was a sad prospect because I really did love college.

     Fast-forward to close to the end of the semester when a dear friend of mine asked me to accompany her on the piano as she auditioned for a part in a musical play that the theater department was preparing to send on a tour of military bases in the Far East and South Pacific that coming Fall. Whoa! A Musical! That was my bread-and-butter in High School. I performed in every musical production that Aurora High School produced during all four years back then. I loved musical theater and had even dreamed of being on Broadway someday. (That’s going to be yet another future tale I’d like to tell you too). I hadn’t even heard about this opportunity but I was happy to help my friend, so we prepared her song and away we went.

     After her audition I hung around and asked the Director, Dr. Scotty Faulkner, if I could audition for the show singing without a piano accompaniment, because I hadn’t really prepared anything to sing because I didn’t know about it (I didn’t tell him that part). He said sure, so I got up and belted out “I’m Getting Married in the Morning” from the Broadway show, My Fair Lady.

     I must have nailed it because they gave me the lead comedy role in the show…J. Sandor Pranz, President of Titanic Records! I was going on tour!

     School’s out. Summer vacation turned out to be great fun and very relaxing because I knew I could put off the inevitable awfulness of finding a job. I was in a show! I must say that I did feel a little badly that I got a role in the show and my friend for whom I played didn’t. Oh well, that’s the theater.

     I'll tell you another story about our tour in another posting, but suffice it to say that our fabulous little production of Bells Are Ringing went to U.S. military bases in Japan, South Korea, Okinawa, Taiwan, the Philippines, Guam and Hawaii.

That experience lasted the entire semester and when we got home just before Christmas in 1961 I had to kiss my beloved theater and college goodbye and start looking for a job.

     My old friend Neal Ross, for whom I worked at my very first job back when I was 14, hired me on as the Assistant Manager of a movie theater in Denver. Sad about not being able to obtain a college degree, I started my new life in the workforce wondering where in the world I would wind up by not having that greatly desired little piece of paper.

     Then…the phone rings.

     It was the Office of the Dean of Men at the University of Colorado wanting me to come up to Boulder and meet with the Dean - Glenn Terrell. 

Oh oh…I must be in big trouble now. Had they at long last discovered that it was me who broke that basement window back in the freshman dorm a year and a half ago? Really, it was an accident. I admit I was more than a bit spooked at the prospect of meeting with the Dean. Kinda like being called to the Principal’s office back in high school, right? This could not a pleasant thing.

      I walked in to his office and the very first thing he said was, “you are a very lucky young man.” When I asked why, he told me that someone had seen my performance in Bells Are Ringing and was interested enough in me as an individual to do a little digging. This person discovered that I was forced to quit school because I was unable to continue financially and they did not want to see that happen.

     Cut to a tight shot of me sitting there with my jaw hitting the floor.

     Dr. Terrell went on to say that this person (he still hadn’t told me who) was paying for my full tuition for the next semester, including books and room and board. I couldn’t believe it. The Dean told me there were three stipulations that came with this gift. (I just knew there had to be a “catch” somewhere). First, I was to strive to finish school and get my degree. Second, I was to do something with the musical and performing talent that I had been blessed with, and lastly, I was not to repay this money, but, I was to do the same for someone else sometime in the future when I was able to do so.

     Stunned!

     This was a true gift…and was completely anonymous. I had absolutely no idea who in the world could have done this for me. And, to this day, I still have no clue. But, that semester is when I met two friends, Chub Anderson and John Hunt, with whom I would form a little folk music band (which I will tell you about in another story) which would become the financial foundation for paying for the rest of my schooling and which would lead to me receiving, at long last, my Bachelor of Arts Degree.

 

   Isn’t that a great story? What a tremendous blessing!