There was a time when a small pipe with holes became very important to me. It didn’t just drop down from the heavens into my lap, but it was presented to me as part of a system that combined science and art which I knew nothing about. Very slowly I learned, not on my own, but through a teacher who was a master of this system.
In 1948, when I began attending South Lincoln Elementary School, Mr. Nash, or more informally, Alexander or Al, was one of its teachers. He was an accomplished, practicing musician whose love of music led him to study music and education at Mount Union College. His education led him to adopt the Flutophone, a widely available, inexpensive plastic wind instrument, as a primary tool in his music instruction. For the first time, he brought the possibility of testing for music aptitude to all elementary schools.
After these basic steps had been taken, each of his individual students, brimming with the enthusiasm that only new students seem to have, took the next step of playing together in their first ensemble of Flutophones. Mr. Nash did his best to patiently reign in those students who were looking around in any direction other than the “conductor,” making faces at one another, and those clueless deemed “tone deaf” by someone along the way. Somewhere in his studies he learned to patiently accept the general cacophony that often raged around him.
With a graduation ensemble performance behind them, the proud graduates each had their names announced and received individual certificates indicating the achievement of their new status. Bravo! Armed with training, practice, experience, and the confidence of learning how to ‘play together,’ the final step was to be taken.
In consultation with Mr. Nash and their parents, a choice needed to be made of a musical instrument that was appropriate to their goals, including keyboard (in many cases untried), an instrument in the brass or woodwind families, or perhaps that most intimate of instruments, their voice. To have constantly pursued these steps in all his schools for so many years, with warmth, patience, and caring, Mr. Nash’s presence not only offered core music instruction to all students throughout the Alliance school system, but it was a significant element in the character and growth of the entire city.