The Band Man

Ted Schockley | December 2, 2000

Long before there was Mr. Holland’s Opus, there was John David Steelman, trying in earnest to teach band for school officials he felt didn’t give a flip whether students knew a flute from a football.

Years after Mr. Holland’s Opus, the hit movie featuring the band director who became the quintessential example of educational passion and dedication, Steelman is still there, weeks shy of turning 70, teaching music in a time-worn middle school within smelling distance of a chicken processing plant.

For most of his 35 years in the classroom, Steelman was in Accomack County, extolling the virtues of band and the educational principles involved in making music. Sometimes his voice was a lonely one. When he talks about music education, Steelman doesn’t speak, he rants.

Some say he rants about plenty more than band. Maybe it’s the only way he can convey his concerns during a career of swimming upstream with a room full of junior instrumentalists in tow.

But now Steelman and the kids and the school administration are witnessing an educational environment in more flux than usual. Better private-sector salaries, coupled with state-mandated Standards of Learning objectives that link a school’s certification to its performance and Accomack’s comparatively low teacher salaries, have made filling some teaching jobs difficult.

Throw in the county’s relative isolation, limited opportunities for decent, just-out-of-college housing and a shrinking availability of qualified music teachers, and Steelman is suddenly back in front of the Mary N. Smith Middle School band under the moniker of “long-term substitute,” baton in hand, fire still burning.

This month, that fire is an old flame — a rekindled vision of a unique band, featuring adults and students that Steelman conducted over two decades ago. The Accomack County Recreational Band, which featured a big sound and a marching corps carrying flags from all 50 states, was an award-winner, performing at parades, the old Oyster Bowl, the Azalea Festival, once even on Tangier Island.

The current group has smaller, but no less meaningful, expectations. They will play a Christmas concert later this month in the middle school auditorium. Adults and students, even father and sons and mothers and daughters, will perform side by side in a show eerily reminiscent of the final scene of Mr. Holland’s Opus, when a gathering of former students surprise Mr. Holland by playing a musical selection written and directed by the beloved teacher.

His parallels to the film aren’t lost on Steelman. He cried through the movie. Even today, he pauses to wipe his eyes when talks about it.

On Thursday, Dec. 14, Steelman might conduct his last concert. The search continues for a full-time, contract-signing band instructor for Mary N. Smith. Since retiring in 1992, Steelman has been back three times to substitute at the podium, and he acknowledges that someday might bring a fourth, teaching being what it is.

First, the sixth-graders will play. It will be their first public performance. Accomack County no longer starts band in fifth grade, a year in which concentration on SOL tests has seemingly preempted other educational pursuits. Steelman was told fifth-grade students need to focus more on English and history. So this sixth-grade class has been taught as beginners with large doses of Steelman’s spunk and talent, which is possibly more than they bargained for when they first elected to try their hands at band.

The seventh- and eighth-graders will then perform, followed by the main event — a group performance, featuring parents and adults who have been practicing with the students. It will be a gathering resembling Steelman’s Accomack County Recreation Band, which also featured adults and students and played to impressed crowds.

The concert is scheduled for 7 p.m. at the Mary N. Smith auditorium. Steelman said there will likely be no admission charged, but a donation will be accepted.

“We’re in desperate need of money,” he said.

Nowhere is that more apparent than in Smith Middle School’s ramshackle band room, a tattered mobile unit moved to the school years ago from the Chincoteague Naval Air Station. There is no air conditioning, no screens in the windows, plenty of flies in summer. It’s tucked away in back of the school and is painted the same bland tan that adorns other units.

Years ago Steelman had to paint the building’s interior himself, rolling on paint between classes. Sometimes, he would conduct class still wearing the painted-on overalls.

Inside the building, Steelman shows a visitor collections of abused instrument parts, a box of trombone slides, a pile of valves from sousaphones. Sousaphones cost thousands of dollars. Steelman says previous band instructors let the students ruin the instruments.

Band in Accomack County is in crisis, Steelman said. He has told the superintendent and anyone else who would listen. High school bands, he said, aren’t thriving. “Everybody said they wish they’d stay home from parades, rather than embarrass the community,” Steelman said. “I’ve heard that said.”

Some of those people have also told Steelman how much they miss the Accomack County Recreational Band, a proud gathering of students and adults from all over the county.

During a recent class Steelman called out the playing assignment to a group of sixth-graders who weren’t even born during the heyday of the renowned “rec band,” his crowning achievement, a time in his life never far from his mind.

It started like this: David Steelman always seemed to take exception with the workings of school brass, mostly because, he claims, they never recognized importance of a band program to students and the community.

Music is important to the man. It always has been. The quote “Life without music is a mistake,” is written under his name in the Northampton High School yearbook, Class of 1948. It was later painted on a wall in his band room. It’s also inscribed on his tombstone, which he’s already picked out and is waiting for him in the Cape Charles Cemetery.

In the early 1970s Steelman had uniforms and a band with pep at Parksley High School. Students from other schools left during the day to play for him. Some, including music teachers at other schools, complained. The Accomack County School Board decided to forbid the practice, which irritates Steelman like a bad tooth, even today.

“Kids cried when the school board made the ruling,” he said.

At the behest of outraged parents, he convinced the county parks and recreation department to have a band. It would be removed from school board control. Students from every school could join the “rec band.” Grants were written. Uniforms were purchased. An old bus was painted handsomely in red, white and blue. Fund-raisers were held. Flags of all 50 states were purchased for a marching corps. Steelman kept his day job and conducted the band after work.

It was a wild success, the pride of the county, frequently chronicled in the News. It finished second one year to the Virginia Tech band in the Oyster Bowl parade. The next year it finished first. The flag corps performed in a Bicentennial celebration in Philadelphia, and attorney Bill Fears of Accomac raised money so the group could go rehearse for the occasion.

The success was in large part due to parks and recreation Director Don Hull, who wrote grants and found money for the band. Plenty of other people helped.

Everybody involved had fun, Steelman said. The band’s sound and actions made the community proud. After a performance, he took six bus loads of band members to the Tidewater Dinner Theater. The band changed from uniforms to dress clothes and was commended on its etiquette and manners.

Still, he said, there was bitterness. An Accomack school superintendent once admonished Steelman, reminding him that the school board wasn’t getting any credit for the rec band.

“If it wasn’t their idea, it was no good,” Steelman said of school officials. “They felt like they were being put down if somebody else had an idea that was going to benefit the county.”

It seemed animosity between Steelman and his bosses perpetuated through the years, climaxed during the summer day that the band teacher took his trumpet and played “Auld Lang Syne” in front of the county office building on one superintendent’s last day on the job.

“He didn’t know anything about band,” he said of the school official, with whom Steelman apparently had a running disagreement. “These people who have never had band, you try to explain it to them. You try to explain what you’re trying to get done. But they don’t understand.”

He mulled playing “Taps” but thought better of it. On the incoming superintendent’s first day on the job, Steelman received a letter, warning an “immediate dismissal” if such actions were ever repeated.

“And then the war started again,” Steelman said.

In the years to come the new boss — and subsequent superintendents — seemed to fare no better with the maverick band director.

“‘They would not let me be,” he said. “Not a one of them. I fought for what I believed in. I’ve always stuck up for my kids.”

The county band gradually faded away, even though the flag corps was reborn at Arcadia High School, Steelman’s last post before retiring in 1992.

His departure marked the end of a career destined for music, even though he never took the class in high school, only piano lessons.

Steelman thought he wanted a career in engineering. He attended Virginia Tech, but joined the Coast Guard when U.S. troops were being deployed to Korea. In the service he met a friend who played saxophone, which Steelman taught himself in his spare time. After being discharged he returned to college, at Madison, finishing with a degree in music education.

He has spent his career ensuring that today’s students have the music opportunities he never had — even if he had to battle for their right.

“My whole life has been kids. My cause was kids. I never had band. I never had a band instructor.”

The old mobile unit is empty. The students have left school for the day. The date “Dec. 14” is written on the chalkboard. It’s the day Steelman and the students are working for. He, and they, clearly have something to prove on that evening.

The bands at Smith Middle School are improving. They’re eager to learn, he reports. Steelman recently asked his eighth-grade band if they had doubts about the old man’s ability. They said they initially wondered about his content knowledge and if he would maintain class discipline. It was exactly what he hoped they would say. He has problems with neither.

He speaks well of the bands. He speaks proudly of the recent practice sessions involving students and adults.

“We loved it,” he said. “Didn’t want to leave. People who have never experienced music, they don’t know what it’s all about. It’s a medicinal thing.”

Still, Steelman has been back long enough to get in a flap, of sorts, with his boss. Before the Smith Middle School homecoming pep rally, Steelman asked where organizers wanted the band. They said they didn’t want the band. The rebuke made the school newspaper. In a story, the school principal said there was “a conflict,” and the procedure became “confusing.” She attributed the confusion to the fact that Steelman was a substitute, not a teacher. She also said it was too windy, and that Steelman hadn’t been working with the students very long.

Steelman would rather be smashed in the head with the business end of a trumpet than be called — for print, no less — a substitute.

“It felt like a put-down,” he said. “It hurt.”

That lone setback aside, Steelman is enthusiastic about his work this fall. He’s miffed that beginning band is no longer taught in fifth grade, claims the school board is “hurting these children” by pushing it back.

He admits he’s had “a good time” and has “enjoyed every minute” of his experience back in the classroom. He’s again sown the seeds of music to beginners and helped novice musicians learn and grow.

In less than two weeks a career of music will boil down to a single Thursday night concert. He hopes to show parents and others the progress made and the potential inherent in students to grasp and enjoy music.

Adults and children playing together will evoke memories of band success from years past. During those years, Steelman tried to make people realize the importance of a band program.

It’s a horn he’s still blowing.

“You don’t know the hell I’ve been through,” said the Eastern Shore’s own Mr. Holland, looking around the forlorn, raggedy band mobile unit. “But I can stand tall. I did it my way.”

One of the Steelman 'kids' 

thanks her teacher

 To the editor:

                I felt compelled to respond to Ted Shockley's article about band director Dave Steelman.  I have been teaching in Accomack County for the past 10 years and have also been a coach.  I know all too well some of the frustrations that Mr. Steelman has felt.  Though most of the faces at the School Board Office are different today than they were in the seventies, the attitudes are the same.  Basically, as Mr. Steelman stated in the article, if it's not their idea, it's not a good one and if there is credit to be had, it belongs to them.  For example, in a recent Eastern Shore News article about state SOL scores, the superintendent stated that the reason for the increase in some of the scores was due to the fact that the school board had provided computers for the teachers.  Neither school administrators, teachers nor students were given any credit for this improvement.

                However, the main reason I am writing is that I was one of Mr. Steelman's "kids."  From 1976 to 1982, I took band in school and was a member of the "rec" band.  Being in the band was one of the highlights of my school years and remains one of my fondest memories.  In fact, whenever I get together with old school buddies, reminiscences of Wednesday night band practices still make their way into the conversation.

                In school, band class was the way a class should be.  There were no frequent passes to the restroom, to use the phone or to the nurse.  Granted, there were days that he ranted and raved and acted what some would even call crazy.  Yet, in the end, the job got done.  In short, Mr. Steelman did what Accomack County paid him to do, He taught his "kids" to play music.

                I recall the feeling that I had when we won the first place trophy in the Oyster Bowl parade - the excitement and pride.  We had fun and we were good!  I only wish that Mr. Steelman were 30 years old instead of 70 so that the high school students of today could enjoy the same feeling that I had some 20 years ago.

                Now that I have been a teacher and a coach, I realize how much work it must have taken to put six bus loads of kids on the street and make it look so good.  Though Mr. Steelman had an incredible amount of help from parents and volunteers, he was the one who taught us the music and made us love it so much.

                So, Dave Steelman, even though three decades of school board employees and school administrators never understood or appreciated what you did, please know that the ones for whom you did it, your "kids," truly did appreciate it.  Thank you for making us love the music!