Whether he was hungry or not, Todd Bowe dreaded lunch hour each school day.
As a first-year Chippewa Falls Senior High School student in 1991-92, Bowe struggled to find his place in his new surroundings. He didn’t feel he fit in with any particular group of classmates, a fact accentuated during lunch when students sought friends to eat with.
A percussionist in the school band, Bowe decided one day to take his lunch to the band room. It was the last time he would feel alone.
He ate his meal that day with band director Douglas Greenhalgh, who had an open-door policy for students seeking a lunchtime spot. The seemingly simple event proved to be a turning point in his life, Bowe recalled.
“He had a way of making you feel good about yourself, that you had value as a person,” Bowe said of Greenhalgh. “All of a sudden I felt like I belonged. I had a group to be with.”
Greenhalgh’s effect on so many lives became clearer last week, Bowe said, as he and others mourned the loss of the marching band director affectionately known as “G.”
A charter bus carrying marching band students, staff and chaperones to Chippewa Falls from a competition in Whitewater slammed into an overturned semitrailer truck early Oct. 16, killing five and injuring 30. The accident occurred five miles west of Osseo.
Those killed in the accident were Greenhalgh, 48; his wife Therese, 51; their 11-year-old granddaughter, Morgan; Branden Atherton, 24, a UW-Eau Claire music major who worked with the band; and 78-year-old bus driver Paul Rasmus.
“(Greenhalgh) profoundly touched my life.” Bowe said. “I am the person I am today in part because of him and that program.”
The outpouring of grief and support provides evidence of Greenhalgh’s reputation as a respected and much-loved educator, said Eric Runestad, executive director of the Wisconsin School Music Association.
“Students of many years ago are just rocked by this,” Runestad said.
Music teachers can have a special effect on students because young musicians may be involved in the program for several years and often form close relationships with their directors and band mates, Runestad said.
“The director becomes not just a teacher, but a role model and a mentor,” he said. “That makes the poignancy of this kind of loss even more acute.”
Building a band
The Chi-Hi marching band, 176 members strong, is known among its counterparts in Wisconsin as one of the best — and biggest — in the state.
The band is admired for its sportsmanship, dedication and enthusiasm, said Bryan Jaeckel. He worked on the Chi-Hi band staff and student taught at the school while at UW-Eau Claire before becoming a co-director of the River Falls High School band with Chi-Hi graduate Joe Coughlin.
But that wasn’t always the case. Twenty-two years ago the school didn’t have a competition marching band.
School officials and others in the community decided to form one, and they hired Greenhalgh to mold it into a high-caliber performance group.
Greenhalgh lived and breathed music. He choreographed all of the band’s performances and wrote many of the songs they performed. Those who worked with him said he challenged them musically.
He ran an arduous program. The Marching Cardinals began practices in June and stepped them up in August, highlighted by a four-day session under the hot sun known to participants as “death camp.”
Greenhalgh’s demanding approach didn’t turn students away. Instead, they flocked to the band, drawn by his infectious love of music and students. Band members worked hard but had fun doing it.
In essence, Greenhalgh and fellow band teacher Brian Collicott made it cool to be in the band, said Teresa McDowell, president of the Chippewa Falls Music Association, a booster group for Chi-Hi’s music department.
Any high school student who wanted to play in the band was welcome, regardless of grade or musical experience. Nobody was cut.
Yet the band performed admirably in marching competitions against schools with less inclusive policies. At last weekend’s Wisconsin School Music Association State Marching Band Championships, for instance, the school placed third in the large-school division behind two audition-only bands from Waukesha that accept just students in grades 10 through 12, McDowell said.
The Chi-Hi program’s open-door approach seemed to improve its quality rather than diminish it, said Ryan Wilson, a band alumnus and UW-Eau Claire music major who has worked with the band since his high school graduation five years ago.
“The band is like one big, strong family,” he said.
Besides his commitment to the band, Greenhalgh’s caring for students was evident in another way, Jon Tulman said. He and Collicott sought students in need of extra attention, said Tulman, father of Jenna, who played trombone in the band before graduating in 2003, and Alyssa, a freshman trumpet player.
“Sometimes parents can’t reach their kids, but these guys were willing to do that,” Tulman said.
Inspiring allegiance
Wilson, 23, was injured in the crash when he was hurled from the vehicle when it struck the semi. As the percussionist recovered from his injuries at his parents’ rural Chippewa Falls home last week, he recounted how his time in the band changed his future.
“I had planned to work with computers for a career,” he said. “Then I decided to be in this band, and it opened up a whole new way of thinking for me. Suddenly I knew that I wanted to work in music.”
Wilson is one of many Chi-Hi band alumni who have gone on to careers in music or music education because of Greenhalgh’s influence, said Jaeckel, indicating he tries to emulate the former director’s concern for the lives of students outside of the band room.
Wilson was so smitten by his band experience that he returns to his alma mater each fall — no matter how busy he is — to work with band members perfecting their routines.
“It’s just something I need to do,” he said. “I don’t want to be without this.”
Wilson isn’t alone in his fervor for the band. Since his graduation 11 years ago, Bowe has worked each fall to help train the band. The two are part of a group of about 15 people — mostly band alumni and a few UW-Eau Claire music majors — who work closely with the Marching Cardinals, often for a couple of hours per day.
“The reason I come back is for Doug Greenhalgh and the experience I had here,” Bowe said.
Filling big shoes
The same sense of comfort Bowe found in the band program more than a decade ago still exists.
Alyssa Tulman, 14, said the band program helped her make the transition from middle school to high school when she was seeking a sense of belonging.
“(Greenhalgh) and Brian (Collicott) talk to you like you are on their level. They don’t talk down to us because we’re students,” she said. “(Greenhalgh) created a place where people accept you for who you are. That helps a lot of us.”
That has inspired a fierce loyalty toward the band among parents and students, said Alyssa’s mother, Kathy Tulman, in turn boosting the band’s membership.
“When someone cares about your kid the way ‘G’ did, it’s hard not to like him,” she said. “This band has so much support because of the way he was.”
Without its leaders, some people worry about the band’s future. Greenhalgh, whose strong persona loomed over the band, is dead. Collicott remains hospitalized in Rochester, Minn., with serious injuries suffered in the crash.
Chippewa Falls school superintendent Mike Schoch acknowledged the band’s uncertain future at a press conference earlier this week when he announced the band probably wouldn’t accompany the playoff-bound football team to games and that the district would begin a search for a band director.
“(Greenhalgh) meant so much to this program. It will be impossible to fill his shoes, but we will do the best we can,” Schoch said.
But three days later, at Greenhalgh’s funeral service, a jazz band played, a fitting tribute to the man sometimes referred to as “the music man.”
As he listened to the music, Bowe, a pallbearer at the funeral, reflected on his time with the band. He thought of the song the band sings at the end of every performance, “Forever Cardinal Bound,” which focuses on the band’s unity. And he remembered another life lesson Greenhalgh taught: determination.
“The one thing I think ‘G’ would have wanted us to do was to forge ahead,” Bowe said. “He had a lot of resolve. When he decided to do something, he did it, and I think we’re going to take the same attitude with the future of this band.”
Already, signs of that resolve are emerging.
Band alumni were so moved by news of Greenhalgh’s death that they are establishing an endowment to support the Chi-Hi music program.
While the climate for finding qualified band teachers is fairly strong, the challenge for Chi-Hi will be to replace the exceptional qualities Greenhalgh brought to the job for 22 years, Runestad said.
Once a band gains a strong reputation, the resulting enthusiasm tends to feed on itself, he said, resulting in a program with high standards and the kind of community support that attracts new generations of musicians.
“History would say that a dynamic person who is gifted and talented and passionate about what they do can have an enormous impact on a music program,” Runestad said.
Jaeckel is optimistic Collicott will return fully recovered, and Chi-Hi’s band tradition will march ahead.
“I think the community sees that program as being very important to them and the administration knows that,” an emotionally drained Jaeckel said between attending Thursday’s funeral in Chippewa Falls for the Greenhalghs and Friday’s services in Waukesha for Atherton, a college fraternity buddy.
Despite uncertainty about the band’s future after last weekend’s tragedy, parents involved with the Chippewa Falls Music Association are confident the program will continue to prosper, McDowell said. Band parent Jeff Steltz suggested that the program’s legacy will move forward.
“The key to its future success is that a part of ‘G’ will be carried by every member of the Chippewa Falls High School Marching Cardinals and its staff and family in their hearts,” he said.
