For Doc

I don't even know what the word mentor means anymore. Now that I'm all grown up and think I've figured out a majority of life, those who I admire I tend just to call 'friend.' But when I was a wee lad I was influenced by many good people, most of them were family and the others were my teachers. And then there was one man and the only man I would call a mentor, William 'Doc' Ballard. He wasn't the family physician but rather a doctor of music ('You can BE that?' queried the 7-year-old), and Doc was the man who taught me to love music. He represented the highest ideals and greatest depth within music during my youth, the Artistic Director of my first boy choir. Doc conducted the top ensemble, and before you had finally graduated through the training choirs and into that ensemble you would sing under him only on the BIG pieces in the BIG concerts, so Doc had this aura about him that was understood. Most of the time you would see him float, rock-like, around the choir headquarters either jovial or angry but always passionately doing something... yet when he saw one of 'his boys' he would grin from ear to ear and call them by name, even if it took him a second for some of the newer kids.

In later years when I moved into that top group I would go to his house and sit in his kitchen with fellow choir studs awaiting my 'passing time' - a harrowing and nerve-wracking twice-weekly 10 minute period in which each of us would stand in front of him and sing from memory the music in our repertoire for that season, and if you 'passed' you would earn a certain amount of points for each song, and the dude with the most points at the end of the season received a medal you could proudly wear as part of your performance attire. One year I was in a competition with Carl Rabun all season long for that medal, and in the last week he beat me by a handful of points. I was cramming my head off trying to learn music - memorize it and sing it well in front of my director - just so I could wear that simple, beautiful symbol of accomplishment. And I lost, yet Doc and his wife Edith decided to give medals to Carl and to me. We had proved our point to his satisfaction, that we knew and loved the music, and that we really loved to wear those sweet ribbons. He didn't know how much that meant to me but in my actions I tried to show him that respect (except when a certain 13-year-old choir vice-president decided it was better to run amok in Rotorua, NZ than obey a simple curfew. He promptly removed me from office. 'Nuff said.)

Doc continues to be a beacon of quality, discipline, self-worth - all filled with the love he modeled and shared with us through music. In a few weekends I will drive back to San Francisco for Doc's memorial service, attended by those who loved him, sang for him, traveled with him, sat in that kitchen or on the tour bus, and were hugged vigorously and scolded even more vigorously by him. We will sing two more pieces for Doc in the cathedral of St. Ignatius where we used to hold those massive annual Spring and Christmas concerts. And there will be stories and tears in our reunions, vigorous hugs and ear-to-ear-grins. While our wives and children (no, not mine) will be in the audience sitting next to our parents, and our voices will resound a shocking three octaves lower, we will all be together as 'Doc's boys' again for the first time in a very, very long time. So I am uplifted and humbled, because I didn't take the initiative to thank my mentor and tell him, 20 years later, how much he meant to me. Doc being who he was, though, surely knew exactly his role in all our lives. Just as Edith said recently of her husband, Doc was truly interested in and really liked people. And I'm one of his boys. 'Nuff said.