A Musician's Tapestry

Petty Officer Languedoc
Prepares to Sound Taps 

A few years ago my son, Aidan, played trumpet in the school jazz band. On his third year of middle school, he was lucky to have four strong musicians in his section. The band director usually had senior members of the group teach junior members as part of each student's development. Not only were Aidan's colleagues great trumpeters, they were also mature young adults who pulled Aidan up to their level. It was an all round great experience for my son.

The jazz band is not your normal middle school ensemble. It is an audition only endeavor that reigns in the best musicians from the student body. Some of the kids are extraordinarily talented. The band often takes on difficult jazz pieces considered high school, even college level charts. In the last year of middle school, Aidan was expected to mentor new members, an experience he looked forward to.

Half the band changed out and unfortunately for Aidan, one of the new trumpet players, Bryson, who Aidan was expected to mentor, was both a mediocre musician and a bit arrogant. Bryson would get lost during most performances, and Aidan thought he would help him with that first. Bryson informed Aidan that he knew all there was to know about the trumpet and had nothing else to learn. I told Aidan that it was his job to help Bryson understand that no one knows it all, and that it's highly likely that his education was in front, not behind him. In retrospect Bryson was well beyond Aidan's influence. Before long, Bryson's middle school vitriol focused on my son.

It started with some of the oddest criticism. Aidan had auditioned for a state level orchestral band that was very competitive and difficult to get into. He made it along with seven other students from his school. Most middle schools have only one musician who is accepted, but the music director at Aidan's school had high expectations, and that led to high achievement. Bryson didn't audition. Upon learning that Aidan was accepted, he told Aidan with a laugh,

"Now, you have to learn more music."

On the bus ride back from a concert, Bryson organized a vote among the band members to decide if Aidan should be ejected from the jazz band. Unfortunately, most of the senior musicians were not on the bus so a bunch of novices voted out the only experienced member present. Aidan was quiet that night. He eventually told us what happened. Instead of being angry, he was disappointed in himself. He said,

"I' can't teach him anything."

When middle schoolers are in a group, they all lean towards the lowest form of behavior. Rallying the crowd against someone gives them all a sense of power. There is no equivalent for this misguided behavior in the adult world. Bullying is a middle school phenomena that ironically makes students feel empowered, but in reality they're exercising their immaturity. Aidan's music instructor is a renowned trumpet player. He often imparts grandfatherly advice. When Aidan asked him what he should do, he said,

"Sometimes, all you have to work with is the threads on the back of the tapestry."

Aidan tried to make sense of this, but he was too preoccupied with the immediate situation to think it through. Historically, the concert we had just attended was the event when the music director would point out all the kids who made it into the regional band. For whatever reason, he didn't do it this year. He chose to focus on the achievements of his fellow teachers. Overlooking the students who were actually performing that night was a real misstep. The bus ride home, which included the ostracizing vote, topped off Aidan's night of misery. I was hoping the next performance at a local retirement facility would be better.

The concert went off without a hitch. The audience was mostly retirees. Some danced stylishly to the jazz tunes. At the end of the concert, the band director took the microphone and announced all the students by name who got into the regional orchestra. The crowd applauded vigorously. He also pointed out what an honor and how difficult an achievement it is to get in. As he finished and the applause dissipated, he added one last comment.

"One of our students is the second youngest bugler in Bugles Across America."

Aidan had long wanted to perform Taps at military funerals after reading an article about the nationwide shortage of competent musicians needed to honor veterans. He read about Bugles Across America (BAA), an organization that provides buglers for veteran services. He learned Taps and other bugle calls on his own. We travelled to an outdoor park in the fall to meet our state BAA director where Aidan auditioned in front of a group of people, enjoying the park. I listened to Aidan play from a distance as a small crowd gathered. When I saw that he and the director were talking, I approached. We learned together that he had made it. It was one of those moments of pride that a parent gets to experience which is unmatched by anything else in life. Afterwards, Aidan joined the Naval Sea Cadets so he could sound Taps in uniform.

Now, he was being singled out in front of what surely was a room full of veterans. The band director continued,

"Taps is played on a bugle, so no valves. It's done all with breath control. Breath for the pitches, breath for duration."

An elderly gentleman asked emphatically,

"Can he play it right now?"

Taps at services must be rendered away from everyone. You're supposed to hear it as if played from a distance which is why the bugler does not stand with the color guard. The bugler is allowed to play the first and last notes for volume only. They're not allowed to practice at the site. They have to stand alone then deliver the twenty-four notes when the time comes. This is how Aidan is trained. So when asked, he picked up his trumpet then moved away from the rest of the band.

The crowd grew quiet as he began playing. I closed my eyes and listened to the notes fill the room. When Aidan finished, the silence was broken by the gentle sound of weeping. I opened my eyes. An elderly woman to my right was quietly crying into her hands. Several veterans were standing with their hands on their hearts. Others stood at attention and saluted. Aidan returned his trumpet to his side with military precision, then something happened that was unexpected. The crowd began to move forward. First, the people who were standing, then others rose solemnly and joined the procession making their way to my son.

When the first man reached Aidan, he outstretched his arm. Aidan and the man shook hands. The man said nothing. He didn't have to. You could see what he wanted to say on his face. Another man took Aidan's hand once it was free. A woman reached Aidan and told him that it brought back memories of her father. Still another gentlemen said that Aidan had returned him to a time when his son had played Taps almost fifty years ago at a summer camp. As the crowd receded, the applause flooded the space.

Aidan remained composed and respectful through the entire event. He later told me that he witnessed the elderly gentlemen slowly rising to their feet, one by one, as he played the twenty-four notes flawlessly. His band members rallied around him in congratulations. Two days earlier, the threads of the tapestry seemed to be so tangled. And on this night, one in which few in attendance will soon forget, Aidan played Taps and brought a room full of people back to a time when they remembered their family and friends. And I finally understood what his music instructor meant.

You work with what you have even if that is the discarded threads on the back of the tapestry, and sometimes that makes the best weave.

Editors Note: Originally posted on January 3, 2017. Aidan is a high school junior who plays trumpet in the school jazz band. He has sounded Taps in uniform for over 40 military events. Auditioning each year, he was selected four times for the Connecticut Eastern Regional Band.

A Level Playing Field

 

Waiting awkwardly for the teacher to arrive she tried to blend into the back of the group of high school freshman. Although athletic, she hated gym class. A thin teen who needed to be reminded to eat, she said that back then she hadn't a disorder. She just forgot. Trapped in the gangly last stages of puberty, the normally outgoing young girl chose to hide from the world when in her gym clothes. A once accomplished half back on the soccer field, her journey to adulthood brought on uncertainty as she balanced her academic studies and athletic achievements in high school.

As an engineer in the male dominated shipbuilding industry, her boss told her on the first day of work that he would escort her down into the shipyard just this once; afterwards she would be on her own. A grown women in her early twenties, she had interned one college summer for the Building Department of her local town. She was tasked with calculating the pressure drop in the potable water system of the bathrooms and showers in the county jail. It was a simple task made difficult by the fact that the facility was occupied. As a summer hire, she often worked in the same space with men charged with murder and rape. Now she was venturing into a shipyard where she would be the only woman among thousands of men.
 
It was hard enough to change into your gym clothes and compete in an inane activity like dodge ball for a grade without also dealing with the callousness of the student body. In the early 80's, there was no anti bullying agendas or focus on esteem building. No one wanted to stand out as doing so would draw the attention of the many assholes who filled the halls of high school. The teachers were no help either. Most gave little notice to the torment endured by the less popular kids. Assimilating into the pack on the gym floor, she pretended to participate in idle chatter. She was a top student with a bright future, but at this moment she wanted to disappear. For her, gym class wasn't something to be enjoyed. It was something to be endured.
 
She chose to work in Ship's Test Organization (STO) as a new engineer. Against her bosses advice, a job in STO would put her in the shipyard more frequently than most new hires. Her father always told her that struggle in the face of obstacles builds character, but she could never have realized at such a young age how dangerous of a choice she had made. There were some hardened people who worked in the shipyard. When she went down in the ways the workers would collectively scream and yell. I once experienced this firsthand. When I asked a colleague what was going on, he said "there must be a woman nearby." One time, a worker on a submarine in drydock removed his badge, then followed her as she ventured to a space she needed access to. When they reached a secluded spot, he pinned her up against the bulkhead. Remaining calm, she looked into his eyes in attempts to remember all she could. Luckily, he backed away. There was no one nearby who could've intervened if he attacked her. She recalls the story with a cold resolve, knowing that surviving meant facing aggression unflinchingly.
 
The gym teacher, Mr. Hinkley, was characteristically late. That meant that after changing up in the locker rooms, she had to hide in the outer edges of the herd while the cool kids summoned up their foolish antics, hoping to get a laugh from the crowd. Back then, in a group of high schoolers you wouldn't find a moral thought among them. They reveled in smoking pot and low achievement, bragging about receiving detention or scuffles with the principal, some with the police. She was silent about her stellar academic achievement, knowing full well that if revealed her torment would be even worse. She was often the target for her thin physique just as much as those who were overweight. Body shaming was just another tool used by the bullies to crush the spirit of others.
 
Eventually her presence in the shipyard was no longer a novelty. There were older men she routinely worked with who were probably fathers to daughters, and I surmise this made them look out for her. Decades before any effort to curtail workplace sexual harassment, she continued to toil in the hyper male environment sometimes experiencing unwanted sexual comments in office spaces as well as the shipyard. She rose to a senior engineer before the company elected to try an experiment in shipbuilding, the Major Area Team. Instead of focusing on systems, the design effort would concentrate on spaces. Having a sixty person interdisciplinary team of engineers, drafters and shipfitters, she was the first Major Area Team Leader focusing on designing and constructing the Auxiliary Machinery Room (AMR) of the next class of nuclear submarine.
 
It wouldn't have mattered if the gym teacher was on time. An out of shape drunkard, Mr. Hinkley had been a cool kid in his glory days. Now, he saw through the antics of the next generation of douchebags who guided the gym class into a collective symphony of mockery. She knew that Mr. Hinkley was harmless, unlike some of the other teachers. It makes for a wonderful story that a teacher pulls a student from the crowd after discovering a special something about them, but she knew that more often than not sudden interest from a male teacher was something to be avoided. Not all were creeps, but there were enough to form a pattern that raised a personal awareness among the female students.
 
They chose her to lead the effort because she was a woman. Not to fulfill any diversity mandates. There was none of that back then. She was picked for this grand experiment of concurrent engineering because many people in management didn't want to change the way they had always built submarines. The navy was pushing for the new construction philosophy so the company had to comply. Her team consisted of all the misfits, the beta workers. The top employees were busy designing the ship the old way. The truth was widely known that the company wanted the project to fail. They picked her because they believed a woman would be unsuccessful.
 
Fifteen minutes had passed since the last students exited the locker rooms. She relaxed a bit, confident that any lame activity they had planned for gym class would be over shortly. A student named "Andy," snuck up behind her like he had done countless times throughout middle school. Andy yanked her gym pants down much to the delight of the waiting crowd. With today's hyperaware woke culture, it's hard to fathom that pulling down a young girl's shorts in gym class wouldn't get someone expelled or a teacher fired, but that's what passed for education in the 80's. As the often target of ridicule, she wanted nothing more than to be left alone. Unfortunately, no one came to her defense, not even other girls. Instead they collectively laughed at her humiliation.
 
She knew her team was staffed primarily by beaten down unionized workers, older guys set in their ways, and younger less experienced people who knew how to operate computers. In addition to designing by space, the new approach mandated that all the drawings had to be done on a computer aided design station, a relatively new tool back then. She decided to team up the older more knowledgeable guys with the younger more computer literate workers. The cross pollination of experience helped the younger generation learn about design while the older workers picked up how to use the computer. She scoured the literature on concurrent engineering as well as design build teams as she quickly transformed her group into a high performing unit, hauling them forward into the future.
 
Andy in gym class was just another problem to solve. With her baby sitting money, she bought shorts with a tie string. The next time he tried to yank down her pants, his failed attempt caught him off guard. She looked Andy in the eyes which caused him to back away and trip over another student. His fall triggered the group into laughter. He never tried that again.
 
As a leader, she spurned on a drive in her people. She listened to their concerns and enacted sound policies based on their input. When unionized drafters on her team told her that they wanted to take vacation in hourly increments in lieu of eight hour blocks, she obliged even though contractually, she wasn't authorized to do so. This caused a rift with other designers in the union who had to take full days even if they only needed part of the day off. Eventually she was dragged into a meeting with her departmental manager, the union president and a company lawyer. The lawyer opened with,
 
"It's come to our attention that you are approving hourly vacation time in one hour increments against the legal labor agreement."
 
"Sometimes they need to take just part of the day off. So rather than lose a full day of work, I approve just what they ask for," she rationalized.
 
With that the top of the lawyer's head almost blew off. The union president chimed in,
 
"You can't do this. I'm getting complaints from other union members."
 
"Do it for them too," she insisted.
 
"We can't do that! It's not negotiated in the contract," the lawyer exclaimed.
 
Her manager sunk his head in his hands. He just wanted to go back to his office and smoke cigarettes. The lawyer continued,
 
"You do know that you are in violation of the collective bargaining agreement between the company and the drafter's union."
 
"There's no reason why this can't be done. People no longer add up hours by hand. It's all automated. It's good for the company and good for the employee," she argued.
 
The lawyer threatened,
 
"I'm asking you just this once. Are you going to stop approving vacation time in one hour increments for unionized employees?"
 
Her answer reminded me of Howard Hughes when he was being grilled by Maine Senator Ralph Owen Brewster in a hearing over cost overruns for war contracts. She answered the lawyer like the way Hughes answered Brewster when asked if he would bring in his chief engineer for questioning a second time. She said,
 
"No, I don't think I will."
 
This angered everyone at the table. A month later having retained her job she read in the company newsletter that her manager and the lawyer came up with the idea to approve vacation in one hour increments for hourly employees. After negotiating with the union president, they all agreed the new policy was best for the company and the employees. They touted the agreement as an example of cooperation between the company and the union outside of normal contract negotiations. She was never mentioned in the article.
 
Tragedy struck when a young family man on her team passed away suddenly from an undiagnosed ailment. She had an important design meeting in front of a tough as nuts admiral who was known for grilling engineers. Normally she had her design leads with her to answer the admiral's questions. The funeral was on the same day as the meeting. She let her whole team off to go to the service as she stood alone to fend off the admiral's barrage of questions. After the meeting, the admiral asked where everyone was. She told him,
 
"They had an important event to attend."
 
The admiral learned later what had transpired and the next time he spoke to company leaders, he declared the Major Area Team concept a success largely due to her leadership and contributions. She went on to train other teams in concurrent engineering such that the concept is still employed by the shipbuilder today.
 
Recently my wife, Christine, and I were reminiscing about our time back then when we had met, dated and fell in love. She told me that the location onboard the submarine in which she was accosted shortly after she was hired was the Auxiliary Machinery Room, the same space she designed for the next class of fast attack submarine by concurrent engineering. A few years after her success as the first Major Area Team Leader, she left the company moving to another industry where after twenty years, she became a vice president.
 
Sometimes I hear people suggest that when a woman or a minority is promoted, it's only because they are a diversity candidate, implying that a more qualified white guy got bumped, but then I think of what my wife endured when she was young over her many years in industry. I am certain that if the playing field was leveled to her experiences, people like me wouldn't go as far as people like her.