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

SOME OF MY BAND STUDENTS

Probably the most outstanding musical student that I ever taught was Eddie Davis, who played trumpet,
but who was a boy of short stature. I don’t think Eddie ever grew past the height of possibly 5 feet 5
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inches, but he ended up being a full Colonel in the 88 Airborne Division of the United States Army,
and received several commendations for heroism in Vietnam, as a paratrooper.

After he retired from the Army, Eddie told me that he had always taken his trumpet with him wherever
he went, and would occasionally be asked to play for some function, or perhaps Taps at a funeral, and he
said that he felt the ability to play the trumpet under the circumstances in which he usually played had a
lot to do with his advancement in the service. It apparently brought him to the attention of some of the
officers who would be instrumental in seeing that he got promotions, so he went from Buck Private in
the army to just one step short of being a General. We played duets together until I was in my seventies.

To my sorrow Eddie passed away from cancer in about 2005, and I felt a great loss, since I was not only
his high school band director, but we had become lifelong friends. (Incidentally, the same relationship
existed between my high school band director, Carl Roberts, and me, after I had finished college and the
Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and was teaching band at Lake Butler. Carl was living in Starke at that
time, and we would get together al either his house or mine, about every two weeks, and sit down and
play trumpet duets. Those were some of the most pleasing moments of my life, getting to sit down and
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be the equal in trumpet playing of Mr. Roberts, whom I had admired greatly ever since I was in the 5
grade). A few of the other outstanding students that I had at the Columbia High School Band were Mack
Lane, Brant Houston, and Preston Pursley, trumpet players, Craig Lawrence, trombone player (Craig
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was playing first chair trombone in the high school band when he started the 7 grade), his brother who
was a year younger than he, Rick Lawrence, who played the French horn; Robert Wood, who started out
on saxophone and later switched to oboe, and who received a scholarship from Stetson University as an
oboe player after he graduated. (Robert Wood is now a PHD and an MD, and is the Chief of Staff at the
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.) He has also made some medical inventions which are being used world­
wide, in addition to giving seminars all over the world to demonstrate some of his medical inventions.
Dr. Wood, as he of course is now known, wrote me a very nice letter about 3 years ago, in which he
expressed his pleasure of having been in the band, and under my tutelage, and receiving that letter was
one of the high points of my life, because as far as he had gone in his profession, I was pleased that he
still would take the time not only to remember me, but to sit down and write me a very complementary
letter. A couple of months later I called Robert in Cincinnati and told him I was anticipating a trip to
Frankfort, Kentucky, and since Cincinnati was only 60 miles north of Frankfort, I would like to meet
him and have supper with him. We did indeed have supper together and I certainly enjoyed seeing him
again, and was tremendously pleased that he had been so successful, but I found him to be the same
Robert Wood that he had been when he was sitting in my band playing oboe.

Barbara Leslie and her sister, Carol, were both excellent clarinet players. Another good trombone player
was Lee Eadie, who now teaches Surgery in Alabama.

Other fine instrumentalists in my high school band were Dale Witt and Randy Colson, who played
trombone at the same time that Craig Lawrence was playing trombone, and 1 probably had the best
trombone section in the entire State of Florida. Those three boys were phenomenal. Another name that
comes to mind as being so outstanding in my high school band was Gloria Williams, who played
clarinet, and who probably followed in her mother’s footsteps of being a high school teacher. Gloria is,
and for many years has been, Gloria Bridges, who married a boy named Bridges in Jasper, and she spent
the rest of her life up until now teaching in the Hamilton County High School in Jasper. She was also
an outstanding majorette at the time she was in the band. Another outstanding musician, who is now also

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