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Page 6 InCider Press November 2006 |
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Karen asked me to write a “Meet the Member” blurb, so here goes. Like so many kids, I took piano lessons, but would rather fish and play sports than practice, so never got very proficient. My mother played well, and the piano was a big part of our home. I attended in rural Maine, and unlikely as it might seem the man who taught music lessons in the area (every instrument except piano) started a school orchestra. A girl who was a much better player than I had the piano cornered, but I wanted to be part of the orchestra so the music teacher found an old C-Melody saxophone my parents could afford, and I got to play oboe music. By the time I got to high school, I had an alto sax, and later got a clarinet to play in the high school band. I also sang in the Glee Club. By my sophomore year, I was part of a dance band (Bobs’ Orchestra - there were two “Bobs”) and we played for our school dances, American Legion dances, etc. in the area. This was before the days of face masks on football helmets, and one of the more vivid things I remember about that band was one time I had to play after getting my mouth all beat up during a football game the afternoon before the dance that night. Not fun! At Bowdoin College, I played in the band the first couple of years, but found Glee Club to be more fun, so put the sax and clarinet away, and haven’t played them for nearly fifty years. I also sang in the acapella chapel choir at Bowdoin, Mostly because for some reason they paid us a nominal amount for doing so. Fast-forward fifteen years to 1969 via graduate schools and a post-doctoral fellowship when we accepted a faculty position in the Vet School at K State. Sometime in the early 70’s when Tom Hart was directing the chorus, we went to a barbershop show in Wamego and attended the afterglow. Kenny Gaebler was the tenor in the guest quartet, and absolutely blew me away when they sang “Easy Street”. I have told him he is the reason I’m a barbershopper today. Fast-forward another 10 years, when at 38 years of age, married with two children and house payments I got accepted to the veterinary school where I was teaching despite E.J. Frick’s fondness for saying that “… PhD’s are persons educated beyond their intelligence.” (Yeah- I did things backwards.) After graduating from veterinary school we returned to my home state of Maine where I worked in a mixed (large and small animals) practice. Kay and I both sang in our church choirs, and I even directed one of them. One day out of the blue I got a call from the Infectious Diseases Dep’t Head asking if I’d be interested in returning to the faculty at KSUCVM. To make a long story short(er), we came back in 1981 and attended a McCain barbershop show, then directed by Ken Lang. I remember someone (probably Bob Swenson) announcing that it would be the last show of the “Grain-Belters Chorus” and my heart sank, but it quickly rose when he said the chorus would now be known as the “Little Apple Barbershop Chorus”. I had kind of secretly wanted to join, but thought you had to be “good” to be in the chorus, and besides, Thursday was my bowling league night. Finally, one Thursday night I got a bowling substitute, mustered my courage, and arrived at the rehearsal place promptly at 7PM to face the perceived audition. ‘Course there was no one there at 7PM, so I figured I’d arrived at the wrong place, or there was no rehearsal that night, or whatever, so I left and it took another five years for me to try it again. Finally, in 1986, with none of the apprehension warranted, I visited a chapter meeting and have been enjoying the singing and fellowship ever since. One of the highlights happened one night when Bob Swenson called to ask if I would like to try singing lead in the “Apple Core Tet”, a quartet he had started in which he was singing baritone. Their lead, Steve Lapatka, was in the service and was being transferred. Of course I jumped at the chance and have been singing in the ACT during its several iterations, one of which had me singing lead, Myron Calhoun (T), Leonard Purvis (Bs), and Steve Siegele (Ba). We really weren’t singing out much, Steve was about to finish his graduate degree and leave, and Myron said he’d had enough, so we agreed to quit. The penultimate iteration of the ACT was born a year or so later on the sidewalk on the way back to the Double Tree Hotel from the Orpheum in Omaha after the quartet contest. Bill Hanson had returned to Manhattan after working for several years in the Washington, DC area, and I got him, Jim Gardner, and Leonard Purvis together there on the sidewalk and we decided to give it a try with Bill singing lead and me as the bari. We sang together for several years until Jim got so involved as bishop of his church that he didn’t have the time to spend on it. We convinced Myron to rejoin us, and we continue to get together once a week as time permits. I can’t end this without mentioning another quartet. I wanted to form a senior’s quartet, so I got together with Sam Kvasnica (Ba), John Schlender (Bs), and Mel Emig (T). Since we were in the September of our years, Sam came |
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Meet Member Bob Ridley |
