Saying Farewell and Thank You

A Life In Music

by Dan Shultz

Professor of Music and Chair of the Music Department, 1979 to 2000 Dan made this presentation prior to a faculty meeting on the Walla Walla College campus in May, 2000.

Landmark events in one’s life tend to trigger more than the usual amount of reflection. Certainly this is true as one approaches retirement, the last significant passage in this life where one has the possibility of thinking about it . . . after it happens!

I have always been wary of public testimonies and have avoided doing them, until now. However, there are some episodes, events, and happenings in my life and spiritual journey that I would like to share out of gratitude for what in retrospect has been a life and career made possible only through the leadings and blessings of God.

My beginnings were shaky. The nurses would not bring me to my mother until three days after I was born because they weren’t sure I was going to live. When finally my parents took me home, I began choking so badly on the first night that my mother panicked and called her doctor who suggested they give me sugar mixed with whiskey to break up the phlegm.

My father in later years talked about his frantic trip to the nearby town and his search for some whiskey in a state where you could only buy it at state stores, which at that hour were closed, and where it was illegal to carry it out of a tavern. My father recalled:

“I went to every place I could think of. Everybody told me they couldn’t sell it to take out. I was desperate. Finally I stopped at the bar in a hotel and told the girl there that I had to have some whiskey for my baby boy and why. She told me to go sit at a table. She came back with a jar and then went over and brought me a shot glass with some whiskey in it. I emptied it into the jar and left.”

Well, it worked. And for the record, that was my first and last experience with that kind of “medicine”!

I was the first child and born with a severely depressed sternum (breastbone) which became more pronounced as I went through childhood. The doctor and my parents were so concerned that through those years I was examined every six months at what were called Crippled Childrens’ Clinics (euphemisms were not in vogue then).

It was at one of these clinics that a doctor suggested it might be helpful if I learned to play a wind instrument, particularly during those early years.

The next thing I knew I was standing beside my mother looking at wind instruments while the owner of the local music store talked about them. He started by showing me a cornet, then a flute, and a clarinet. The glitter of that cornet caught my eye, but by the time he finished telling us about the instruments, I was so confused that when he asked what I wanted to study, I blurted out, “The clarinet.”

Imagine the disappointment of that 10-year-old when at the first lesson the teacher opened the case and handed him a silver metal clarinet. However, except for that fortunate turn of events, I might have ended up as a brass player, so maybe there was a blessing in this anyway!

My mother had become an Adventist when I was three and I attended a one-room church school from 6th through 8th grades. I went to the local public junior high school for ninth grade, where I played in the band.

At the end of the year I went to the director and told him that although I wanted to play in his senior high school band the next year, I would not be able to do so because I was a Seventh-day Adventist and could not march during the Friday evening football games.

He put his hand on my shoulder, looked at me, and said “anybody who is willing to take that stance is somebody I want in my band. Just sit up in the bleachers during practice. Join us after Thanksgiving when the season ends.”

That fall as I was walking towards the football field, he came up behind me and said, “Dan, how would you like to learn to play the oboe? I will show you how to blow it and teach you a scale. You can practice while we rehearse outside this fall.” I had no idea what an oboe was, but said “yes.”

I fell in love with the sound of that instrument, practicing two hours a day. Many nights, my father, who was a 10 o’clock-to bed person would come to the bottom of the stairs and yell “That’s enough, Danny. Its time to go to bed.” That instrument and music became a major part of my identity, an important emotional outlet in those critical teenage years.

Earlier in life I had become an avid and rapid reader, often reading a book a day. That, coupled with a deep interest in history and religion, led to extended reading of the Bible, beginning at age 12. By the time I graduated from high school I had read the Bible three times. I was particularly taken with the books of Proverbs and Psalms, as well as the Sermon on the Mount, reading them numerous times.

By the time I left home for college I had come to the realization that the reading and formal prayer were in themselves only a beginning. I also had developed a practice of inwardly quietly talking to God. When I saw “Fiddler on the Roof” for the first time I immediately identified with the main character, Tevye, who was always talking in one form or another with his Maker.

Part of this interest in spiritual matters was driven by the fact that I was uncertain about how long I would live, given the intense pain in my chest in my teenage years, some of it related to the displacement of lungs, heart, and spine that was occurring as I developed physically.

My mother was determined that her children would have a college education in one of our schools and, following high school graduation, off I went to the nearest one. That year was a disaster. Although intending to be a history major, I ended up as an oboe major. The band director and oboe teacher, who had come to that college with the understanding that he could run a music store in the music building because he was paid $1 less than full salary, early on tried to get me to study accordion, because he could pocket the lesson fee, promising that if I took accordion he would get me a job in any academy I wanted to go to.

Now while it was true I was from the hills of Pennsylvania, I wasn’t that naive, so I declined.

I rented my oboe from him directly, paying $5 a month. On a Sunday in April of that year I went to get it from a closet where it was kept, only to find it was missing. When I asked him where it was, he told me that since I was behind in the rent, it was not available until I paid him. I asked and than pled with him to let me use it at least until my lesson with him on Tuesday, since I would have to call home for the money and it would take some time to get it. He refused.

I returned to my dorm room angry, overcome by frustration. I remember going to the window looking out on the campus and slowly pounding my right fist on the nearby wall. I had no instrument . . . and I was stuck with a fast talking music teacher who ran a Mickey Mouse band program far inferior to what I had known in high school, someone who was obviously more interested in himself than his job or his students.

The disillusionment was total. I left at the end of the year, vowing never go to another Adventist school and never to be in music again.

During that summer, a sister talked me into going to Atlantic Union College where I registered that fall as a history major. But I missed my music too much. I joined the college band and was encouraged to play in a chamber group with a young instructor, Melvin West.

Late that fall, after the group had played in a church on a Sunday morning and returned to the campus, Mel turned to me after we had parked outside the music building and said simply, “Dan, You should be in music.”

I was flattered, but pointed out to him that the semester was about over and I would be behind in theory. He said, “I will tutor you” . . . and he did.

It was the pivotal point in my life.

My goal when I graduated was to go out and somewhere in the Adventist system develop a band program equal to the best in any high school.

My first job was at Forest Lake Academy in Florida. Many of my lessons there were grade school students. It was at one of these lessons with a young trumpet player that I had an experience that still haunts me. He was a shy boy of about ten and on this particular day not doing well at all.

Growing impatient over what appeared to be a lack of practice, I finally said, “Tommy, it sounds like you haven’t practiced. You are wasting my time and your parents’ money. There is no point to continuing our lesson today. Practice this next week and we will have a full lesson.”

He didn’t say anything as he quietly put his horn away, got up and left. A moment or two later, I happened to glance out the window in time to see this little kid, trudging up the hill, bent over, weeping uncontrollably. I learned a valuable lesson that day about the fragile world our students live in and how easily they can be hurt.

Three years later I went to Adelphian Academy in Michigan where there was a greater opportunity to create a quality music program. At the end of my first year, in late summer as I was completing some graduate study, the choir director suddenly resigned. I returned home, troubled by the fact that I might have to do choir, which would diminish what was developing in the band.

On Sunday evening, a week before school was to start I fell asleep, having my usual conversation with God about this concern. I awoke the next morning to a voice saying, “Carl Ashlock.” He was a musical person I had worked with at Forest Lake Academy where had been the boys’ dean and taught Bible. He had a gift for working with young people. Carl had been unfairly released two years earlier, because of politics, and had been working in the public school system as a counselor.

I immediately went to the principal and said I think I have someone who can do the choirs, and began to describe his qualities. Before I finished, he interrupted with the name, since they had looked at him earlier that summer as a possibility for being dean. He liked the suggestion, immediately made a phone call, and by week’s end Carl and his family were on campus.

For three years he would run an outstanding choral program. And within a few more years would eventually be one of the more successful deans of men at Andrews University.

We fell to talking several months after he arrived about how he had come to be there. He described how on the Sunday night before he got the phone call with its invitation to come, he had gone to an orange grove and had prayed all night that somehow he be able to teach again in our system.

As we compared notes we came to realize that his name had come to me the following morning, as that night was ending. I am still moved by the recollection of this evidence of the power of prayer.

The feeler to come to WWC came at a national convention of NASM music department chairs held in Colorado in November 1978. The representative from WWC, who was sharing a room with Carlyle Manous, then chair at Pacfic Union College, had, with Carlyle, invited me up to their room to visit since we were all friends.

WWC was looking for a music chair and as the talk turned to that subject, a description of what they were looking for in specialties and experience started to sound pretty familiar. It was a not-too-veiled inquiry as to my interest.

I was really enjoying my work at Union college as band director and chair, but said I would entertain the idea. Over the next two days, I heard a detailed description about the troubled situation here in music at that time. Two weeks later I was invited to come.

It would take me over six weeks to decide. Given what I had heard via the grapevine and in the debriefing in Colorado, it seemed that a move here to serve as chair was tantamount to committing professional suicide. Yet, even though it represented the greatest professional risk of my career, I felt impressed to come.

The concern was unwarranted. The music faculty was committed to getting past the turmoil and, while there were problems, there was support from both students and faculty that made the resolving of those problems a group accomplishment.

And, as I have discovered in so many instances in my life, decisions involving the greatest risks often, in the end, yield the greatest return.

Community outreach has always been one of my priorities. And, in one instance while here, that led to one of the most stressful experiences of my career. After five years as a member of the Walla Walla Symphony board, I was elected president of that group. There were problems with the orchestra at that time which came to a head at the end of my first year in that position when the conductor attempted to subvert the leadership and power of the board to solidify his control.

The short of it is that we confronted him with his activities and requested his resignation. He refused and we were forced to release him. Two lawsuits followed. The community was polarized.

Because of the lawsuits, we could not respond fully to the public accusations by the conductor and his supporters made in the paper and at public meetings. There were numerous letters to the Union Bulletin editor and endless phone calls. It was a colossal nightmare.

The symphony board, which does not usually meet in the summer, did so that year.

And there was a lot of talking to God by yours truly . . . and something else.

While prayer and religious references are inappropriate in a public community setting like that of the board, I began to get phone calls and notes from active Christians of all persuasions who were on that board. They wanted to let me know they were praying for guidance in the board’s decisions and for me as I led out in this troubling time.

That support was an inspiring experience . . . and a valuable lesson in the power of prayer in the experience of all Christians, regardless of the label.

In the end, the lawsuits were dismissed, and a new conductor, Yaacov Bergman, was chosen.

Looking back . . .

The physical impairment of that firstborn that so troubled my parents, led me to music, and a career that would never have happened otherwise.

The uncertainty of those childhood and teenage years led to a grappling with spiritual matters that profoundly affected the rest of my life.

Those troubling happenings in that first year of college in the end, yielded insights and a sensitivity as I have subsequently worked with students.

Even the happenstance choice of musical instruments seems in retrospect, not to have been so, since the chance to work at Union College came about, in part, because I played a woodwind, more specifically, because I played the oboe.

As my career unfolded and my work at the college level began and has continued, I have never forgotten the experiences of that lonely first year at college away from home and the disappointment and frustration of that freshman year . . .

And I have also not forgotten that teacher who, in my sophomore year, took the time to encourage and help a student at a crossroads.

As my opportunity for service has broadened, those memories have been a reference point for how I teach, approach students, and how I have administered music programs.

In looking back over the events of my life, the connections and progression of events, and the eventual workings out of what seemed liabilities and disasters at the moment - all have led to a trust in the leadings of God in my life.

It has been my good fortune to work at four fine schools, in Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, and here. And Walla Walla College has become the most treasured part of that professional journey.

You as faculty, staff, administration . . . and countless students have all made these years in that journey a marvelous experience. I am most fortunate . . . and grateful to God for His leading in my life . . . and the Christian friendship and support you have provided.

Dan Shultz
WWC Faculty Meeting
May, 2000

At campus reception, all five retiring faculty were honored. From left: Debra Richter, associate professor of music; Dan Shultz, professor of music; and Sonya Gourley.

Dan chats with fellow professor Kraig Scott, associate professor of music.

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