Thursday June 23, 2011

For those of you who do not know Bill and Marilyn, they are friends of 39 years.  Bill and I met while working together at Valencia High School in Placentia CA.  He was the choir director and music teacher and I was the drama teacher.  We conned Yvonne to play for the musicals that we produced with the high school kids.  Over the 7 years that we worked together we produced about 14 musicals but we both remember the 4 and ½ hour production of How to Succeed in Business without really Trying.  My first musical directing experience (I did not know that we could cut scenes or musical numbers from the show).  We have kept in loose contact sense then when Yvonne and  I went to Hartnell and Bill and Marilyn moved to Greeley CO so Bill could complete a PhD in Choral Conducting.  Though Yvonne and I have remained in one place they have moved around trying to find a school of music that fit Bill’s viewpoint.  This finally happened at the University of Texas at El Paso.   They have one son who is now married with two little boys and another child due in three months. 

Today Bill and Marilyn took us on a tour of El Paso.  We went to UTEP and were shown around the university and specifically around Bill’s world, the music department.  This university has an interesting architectural style (Bhutanese) what all but a few buildings still follow.  The first president's wife had visited Bhutan and Tibet and fallen in love with this style and convinced him to base the university buildings on this style. 

We visited their church where Bill was the music director and is now retired from that position.  They showed us the down town area, the Rio Grande, the Border Fence.  We drove through the Franklin Mountains and were able to see how really large this city is (600,000). 

Then it was back to the house for more conversation and wine (a really good Robert Strong).  The conversation covered soup to nuts and by 10:00 was not slowing down for the second night in a row.  We knew that the morning was coming and we finally call a halt and it was off to bed. 

We are blessed to have this solid friendship that has been maintained between the four of us regardless of the time apart.  Where all topics of conversation are allowed with graceful disagreement at times.