DID YOU KNOW?

In January 1983, Helen Saba Worden was President of The Shepherd Society; Norman Hackerman was President of Rice University (Ronald W. Reagan was President of the United States, George Herbert Walker Bush his Vice President); Charles W. Duncan, Jr. was Chairman of the Rice Board of Governors; Larry Livingston was Dean of The Shepherd School of Music; there were 137 music majors; tuition was only $3,700/year (gasoline was $1.24/gallon); and I started working at at the Shepherd School.

Helen Worden at The Shepherd School of Music 30th Anniversary Gala

Last week Mrs. Worden (I still call her that), her niece Julia, Charlotte Rothwell and I went to a performance of Houston Grand Opera's production of Carmen.  It was wonderful!  There were 21 Shepherd School students/alums in the orchestra and 11 of our singers in the chorus onstage. At intermission, Mrs. Worden, our current Historian, mentioned that she would like me to pick up a few thousand boxes of Shepherd Society/Shepherd School archives that she has accumulated over the years.   There will be lots of good stuff in there, and some of it will find its way into this newsletter.

Our new development officer, Stephanie Ann Jones, is helping me embrace change—no small task (just ask her).  But I think that even in an electronic newsletter there is room for history and tradition.  So who knows where this will go, but with 15 members of the faculty (Robert Atherholt, Walter Bailey, Richard Brown, Marcia Citron, Brian Connelly, Paul Ellison, Arthur Gottschalk, Clyde Holloway, David Kirk, Richard Lavenda, Sergiu Luca, Paula Page, Dean Shank, Pieter Visser, David Waters) and 5 of the staff (Andy Bradley, Tom Littman, Marty Merritt, Gary Smith, Liz Yeates) at the Shepherd School for more than 20 years, it will be interesting to find out.

I think I will start each column with a question just to get your attention.  I already know what I'm going to ask next time.

Gary Smith
Associate Dean