August marks the 95th birthday of my father, Gary T. Garner. He lives alone in a spacious house in Amarillo, Texas, where he follows a routine: rises late, eats a cinnamon roll, goes down to his basement music studio, and arranges duets, trios, and quartets appropriate for students, creating sheet music as well as recordings. He spends the day testing and perfecting the parts by performing them on flute, clarinet, and saxophone. He supplies these to area high schools, where they are used in training young musicians. In the evenings, it’s a light dinner and hours of news programs, which often get him pretty agitated — given the state of politics today.
This retired music professor, a widower since 1994, remains in some demand as a clinician of bands: He conducts a good deal even today, often driving himself to Clovis, Odessa, or some other town to spend four or five hours on the podium rehearsing a band to prepare it for a University Interscholastic League contest. Since earning his doctorate in music education at USC in the mid-1960s, he has been a clinician for bands and orchestras throughout the Southwest. During spring break in 1970, the two of us traveled 215 miles from Canyon (just south of Amarillo) to Iowa Park, Texas, where he spent a full day rehearsing a high school band. I sat in the auditorium doing homework. We did that a lot when I was growing up.
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