A. Beggs Letter, part I

The following is the first half of the letter from Mr. Beggs that I received yesterday. I've talked with Madge and she gave me permission to quote his letter.

July 4, 2008

Dear Gary:

What a surprise to receive your book, Pebbles. I am very grateful to receive it and it has revived many memories of Cedar Vale.

We moved to Cedar Vale after I finished my last year of college at Pittsburg State in 1947. It was a complete little town with many stores and lots of friendly people. They wanted a school band and were very supportive of my efforts. They had 8 students in the band and just a box of old music from past city bands. I found enough Bennett band books to start the band. You mentioned Bill Leonard. He was a good supporter and we visited a lot about the band along with Dr. Josh Stone. Lincoln Robinson was probably my best supporter.

About all we had were two old single tension snare drums and a wooden single tension bass drum. I remember some old brass instruments and an old Helican bass horn.

I talked to Bill about getting Cedar Vale painted on the bass drum and he volunteered to do it. At the bottom he painted “Bill done it.”

I had contracted to teach for $2,700.00 for the term and the Lions Club had agreed to pay $300.00 of it if I would give free lessons for the 3 summer months. I did and the response was tremendous.

We used to have band practice on the stage in the old auditorium. That meant setting up and tearing down each day. I remember the kids would be so excited that they would say, “Let's skip lunch” and we would practice through the lunch hour. We had band scheduled just before lunch.

My schedule was pretty hectic because my first contract called for band in both schools, vocal in both schools, 9th grade general science, study hall, class sponsor, and working gates at ball games and other activities. We had a seven period schedule.

Mr. Vandruff, our superintendent, could see I wasn’t very interested in vocal music, especially the elementary and eventually I ended up with just band.