Skip Granger, 1960
When I think about playing clarinet for three years in the East High concert orchestra and marching band, I do not think so much about performing as about a very negative experience. During my sophomore year, I forgot to bring my clarinet one morning, and I thought our music director told me home to get it. When I returned to campus, I ran into Mr. Kirby, who asked to see my permission slip. Since I did not have one (and Mr. Thompson did not concede that he had sent me home to retrieve it), Mr. Kirby suspended me for a week. Luckily, my father was in New York, but that just gave me time for anguish as I awaited his return. In the stress that followed, my grades tanked and I lost my class office for my junior year. There. I got that off my mind.
Coincidentally, Mr. Kirby subsequently asked me to do a free magic show for one of his groups, which I did. I still think that he was aware of what I charged for my performances. Dan Tontz used to kid me because I was paid the same for my 20-minute magic show at Wichita Country Club as he shared with the EIGHT members of Bill Strout’s dance orchestra for their three-hour performance.
One of my most unique high school experiences occurred when the Kansas University Band played a concert in Wichita. As a clarinetist in the Wichita High School East orchestra and the marching band, I offered to host two of the members to stay in my home. After the concert, the KU guests and I came back to our house. We had a large recreation room with a full-size commercial pinball machine, ping pong table, etc. The bassoonist, Lowell Lee Andrews, was especially enamored by the pinball machine and didn’t want to share it. After they left, I thought little about it, until I learned that he went back to Woolcott for Thanksgiving and murdered his mother, father and sister. Afterward, he returned to Lawrence and went to a movie! He was later convicted and sentenced to death, and after appeals all the way to the US Supreme Court, he was hanged on November 30th, 1962. I watched the case proceed since I felt a personal connection.
