Page 146 - a-columbia-county-boys-recollections-and-memories-of-columbia-county-florida-(2012)-lenvil-h-dicks

A Columbia County Boy's Recollections and Memories of Columbia County Florida (2012) Lenvil H. Dicks

TRYING TO PAY BACK STETSON

I have always felt deeply indebted to Stetson University, for providing me with not only a good music
education, but it provided me with a means of approaching other kinds of problems 1 would encounter in
my life.

1 have a great level of admiration for the University, and although it is small, 1 am totally convinced that
it is one of the best Universities in the U.S.A.

In about 2008 or 2009, after having provided scholarships to Stetson on an annual basis for many years,
I decided to endow a music scholarship at Stetson.

To receive this scholarship a student must be a member of either the Stetson Symphony Orchestra or the
Stetson University Band, and be a performer on either a wind instrument, a string instrument that is used
in the orchestra, or a percussionist.

The amount of the gift was sufficient so that the annual interest off the money would provide tuition for
one student for one entire year, and therefore the actual gift will actually never get any smaller. Only the
interest will be used to give scholarships.

After that, 1 began to hear that the rehearsal room in the music building had gotten too small to
accommodate the Stetson Symphony Orchestra and Stetson University Band, since both organizations
had grown so much that there was not sufficient room for rehearsals to be conducted satisfactorily, and
there was an additional need for instrument storage space.

Therefore, I had a new rehearsal hall built, which was considerably larger than the old one, and saw that
it was built to first-class specifications. We considered all the acoustic aspects needed in a rehearsal hall,
and of course it was adequately heated and air conditioned, and we had a side room attached to the
rehearsal hall which was sufficient to give storage spaces for all of the instruments they would be apt to
need.

When Stetson brought this need for the new rehearsal hall to my attention, it was their intent to name the
rehearsal hall after me. As we went along with the project, and after I learned my former Band Director,
Dick Feasel, had terminal cancer, I checked with the University to see if they had any objections to
naming the rehearsal hall, the “Richard M. Feasel Rehearsal Hall”, and it was my wish to name this
project after him, and in his honor.

There is a bronze plate attached to the rehearsal hall identifying it as the Richard M. Feasel Rehearsal
Hall, and I called Dick Feasel about 2 weeks before the completion ofthe project and advised him of
what we had done.

I am so glad that I did this, because Dick passed away just before the rehearsal hall was completed.
Thus, students attending Stetson 65 years from now will know who Richard M. Feasel was.

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