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

OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS

I lived in University housing on the Baylor Campus, and one Friday afternoon soon after lunch someone
came to my little place in which I was living and told me that the Dean had called from Dallas, which
was about 100 miles north of Waco, and wanted me to go to a telephone and call him at a certain
number.

Needless to say 1 was flabbergasted at what the Dean might want with me to the extent that he would
call all the way from Dallas. Nevertheless, 1 went to a phone in the music building and called him at the
number he had left me. His first words to me were “Lenvil do you have an automobile?” I told him yes
sir I had an old '39 Chevrolet which at that time in the month of March, 1952 would have been 13 years
old, and had over 100,000 miles on it, but nevertheless I told him 1 thought it would make it to Dallas.
His next question to me was did 1 have any black shoes. I told him yes I had a pair of black shoes and
then he told me “bring your trumpet and wear your black shoes and meet me in the lobby of the main
auditorium at SMU University in Dallas” as soon as I could get there. 1 asked him what was up, and he
said “The Dallas Symphony’s First Trumpet Player came down with a bad tooth problem which
prevents him from playing, and you are going to play First Trumpet in the Dallas Symphony tonight”.

It seems that Dean Sternberg had been invited to be Guest Conductor of the Dallas Symphony on that
Friday night and the following Saturday night, (the Dallas Orchestra always had to play their concerts
twice because there was not an auditorium in Dallas at that time big enough to accommodate all of the
people that would want to attend a concert) and therefore he expected me to play not only on Friday
night but on Saturday night also. The Orchestra provided me with a claw hammer tail tuxedo and
everything that went with it, since the entire Orchestra wore tails at every performance and of course 1
owned no such clothes. But they had enough that they could provide me with what I needed to wear.

I drove to Dallas and met the Dean, and confess to a great deal of anxiety about what I was undertaking,
because the Dallas Symphony was known to be one of the best Orchestras in the Country, probably one
of the top 6 behind perhaps the New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Symphony, The San
Francisco Symphony, plus perhaps two or three others, and I suddenly went professional at the very top
level and without much notice.

However Dean Sternberg apparently had a lot of confidence in me or he would not have put me in such
a position. I confess to feeling somewhat anxious as well as feeling quite flattered.

That Friday night Concert included a couple of selections that we had previously performed with the
Baylor Symphony so I was familiar with those selections. However, the other numbers included on the
Concert were numbers that I had to sight-read, as well as actually having to sight-read and transpose
some of them. Some of the selections were written for C Trumpet, D Trumpet, and E Flat trumpet, and
of course in those days we all played B Flat Trumpets, so any composition written for one of the other
Trumpets had to be transposed by reading and playing different notes than the ones that actually
appeared on the page. Fortunately, I had been taught by Mr. Joseph Gustet prior to attending Baylor and
he had recommended several books on transposition, which really saved my life in that respect.

I got through that Friday night Concert without any problems and the other two Trumpet players who
played the second and third parts were very cordial and complimentary to me at what I had done and the
manner in which 1 had done it, which pleased me a great deal because these other two gentlemen were
quite accomplished professional trumpet players. I still remember their names some 65 years later, and
the second trumpet player’s name was Red Bromfield, from New Orleans and the third trumpet player
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