AND THE BAND PLAYS ON

Love for their hometown is the main reason Jackson citizens have supported their band program so well over the years, says Nick Leist, who directed the Jackson High School band for 30 years.

"So many people do not move off; they graduate from high school, go off to college and come back to Jackson to live. As I direct the municipal band, I look out (into the audience) and they are all my kids. They have all come back."

Leist's is one of the compelling interviews in a new book titled "The History of the Band Program at Jackson High School." Written by Southeast music education professor and Jackson High school alumnus Dr. Carol J. McDowell, the book also contains with historical photographs of the band dating back to 1925 and continuing through 1998. Most were gleaned from the Silver Arrow yearbook, with some archival photos and newspaper clippings used to fill out the history.

A.W. Roloff, who founded the Jackson Municipal Band in 1921, is credited with starting the high school band in 1924. The band drew a tepid review in that year's yearbook, which stated: "As this is the first year a band was organized in the high school, no first-class band could be expected." That changed.

The quality of the band directors Jackson has been able to hire has served the program as well. Two of the most important were Leist and LeRoy Mason.

Mason, who went on to bring Southeast Missouri State's Golden Eagles national acclaim, was the band director in the Jackson schools from 1939 to 1957. He began the Jackson Band Festival in 1945, an event that grew so large that it is now held at four different sites in Southeast Missouri.

In the book, Leist talks about the strong influence Mason had on his life beginning in high school, even though Leist attended Illmo-Fornfelt-Ancell High School and not Jackson.

He was planning to go to the University of Missouri at Rolla to become an architect until an encounter with Mason at the Jackson Band Festival. Leist's band was having trouble keeping up with its new director's tempo on "The Stars and Stripes Forever."

The director "took off like a scalded rabbit," he recalls. "We hit the dogfight and there were only two people left playing in the band, me and a trumpet player." When the debacle was over, the stern-mannered Mason tapped him on the shoulder and asked, "Boy, where are you going to college next year?"

Mason convinced him to enroll at Southeast for two years as a pre-engineering major.

After Leist graduated from Southeast with a music education degree, Mason persuaded him to try teaching for a year instead of pursing a graduate degree in trombone performance at Peabody College in Nashville. After that year, Leist recalls, "I was hooked."

In an interview with Dr. Mark Scully, the former Jackson High School principal who went on to become president of then-Southeast Missouri State College, he recounts how he lured Mason from Jackson to Southeast though the Jackson superintendent laughed at the notion and said it couldn't be done. Mason's philosophy at both Jackson and Southeast was "entertainment, pure and simple" and "hard work," Scully said.

McDowell's book ends in 1998 with Leist's retirement, theoretically the end of an era. But Pat Schwent, who joined the Jackson schools' music faculty in 1975 and became the band director when Leist retired, also studied under Mason at Southeast, graduating in 1971.

The bond between the Jackson band program and Southeast Missouri State University runs through the book.

On page 110 is a picture of the 1966 Indian Princesses, including drum majorette Vicki Litzelfelner. Litzelfelner went on to become Mason's drum majorette with the Golden Eagles. Last year, Litzelfelner (now Vicki Abernathy) led a fund-raising drive that enabled the LeRoy Mason Scholarship to be fully endowed.

McDowell graduated from Jackson High School in 1982 and from Southeast Missouri State University in 1986. She taught for seven years at Riverview Gardens in St. Louis, where Mason also taught. Jackson has a rare band program, she says.

"After studying with Mrs. Schwent and Mr. Leist, I thought all school districts would have the teachers and facilities Jackson had. It doesn't work that way."

She gathered the information that became the book as one of the projects leading to her doctorate at Florida State University. One of her professors suggested turning the project into a book. Her parents, Erma and Joe McDowell of Jackson, published it as a gift to their daughter. The publisher is Stewart Printing and Publishing Co. in Marble Hill.

The book is available at Super Styles hair salon in Jackson or can be ordered by phoning McDowell at 986-6735 or her parents at 243-5683.