One of the turns of good fortune was that my years in high school were the last years that Paul Nelson was the band and choir director at that school. He was, for our small town, a quirky man. His instrument was the tuba. His wife was the principal oboist in the symphony. Our small town, of course, didn’t have a symphony orchestra. They played in the orchestra of a community that was a sixty mile one-way drive from our community. That involvement was a factor in my third year of high school when he supported my taking private trumpet lessons in that town from the symphony’s principal trumpeter. Mr. Nelson told my father that music can demand extra efforts and sacrifice and noted that they made the trips to the other town for every rehearsal and performance of the symphony.

Mr. Nelson built a harpsichord from a kit in his garage and tuned it to be played in orchestra and band concerts at our school. He carved double reeds as a hobby and made all of the reeds his wife used playing her oboe as well as all of the reeds used by the oboe and bassoon players in our high school band, which was two players, one oboe and one bassoon, though I’m not sure we even had that many. I can only remember the same classmate playing the oboe and switching to the bassoon.

In a town where virtually every one either drove Chevys or Fords because those were the brands that had dealers, with a small number who drove International, Jeep, or Chrysler cars, Mr. Nelson had a mid-1960’s Rambler Ambassador station wagon. He needed the wagon. He was, after all, a tuba player.

I helped him move to the town where the symphony orchestra played during the summer following my junior year in high school. He had obtained a job as the band director of a high school in that town and wouldn’t have to make the commute to play in the symphony. We moved his harpsichord. I didn’t mind helping him move. I was moving on that summer, too. I had been accepted to college on academic probation without being required to complete my high school diploma. I was also infatuated with a brilliant and beautiful entering freshman student at that college who turned out to be the salutatorian of the class four years later. By then we were married. That infatuation has remained as strong today as it was back then.

Mr. Nelson was, for years, my model of what a choir director should be. Since those days, I have sung in church choirs in many different places and participated in a few community choruses as well. One year, I sang with the Dakota Choral Union when we lived in Rapid City. We performed Verdi’s Requiem with the Symphony Orchestra and the opportunity to be a part of such a monumental undertaking was worth the effort of adding rehearsals to an already overfilled schedule.

Each time I have sung in a choir, I have tried to remember what Mr. Nelson taught me about the responsibilities of a chorister: how to behave in rehearsal, how to practice music between rehearsals, how to sight read, how to listen to those around me, how and when to offer my opinions about music selection and artistic interpretation. I was a bit saddened yesterday, when I was thinking of Mr. Nelson, that I can no longer call up how his voice sounded from my memory. For years, I could hear his voice when I rehearsed with various choirs.

There is a slight tension when a pastor sings in a church choir. Many church members, including many church choir directors, consider the pastor to be the boss of the choir director. I was always careful, however, to be very clear that when I attended a rehearsal, the choir director was in charge. If another member of the choir questioned the choice of an anthem, its pace or other elements of interpretation, I would simply say, “I’m glad to discuss that with you, but not at choir rehearsal. This time is to rehearse, not discuss.” In my mind, I was hearing Mr. Nelson who refused to allow any discussion of choice of music or how it should be presented during rehearsals. He welcomed students and their parents to come and talk with him about those topics, but never during a rehearsal. Rehearsals were for becoming a choir. That meant singing with one voice and to do so meant that he was in charge and ruled without discussion of authority. In a rehearsal, we were quiet except when singing, we followed his direction, and we didn’t complain. I’ve followed those rehearsal rules for my life.

And now, as I travel through my seventies and am well aware that my voice is not as strong or as reliable as it once was, that my breath control has slipped and that my phrasing requires more work, I have the pleasure of singing in a church choir simply as a member of the choir. I didn’t sing in the choir when I was an employee of the congregation. I had duties with conflicting schedules. Now, I can volunteer for the choir.

A lot has changed. We have very few anthems that are commercially printed music. Most of our anthems are reproduced on the copy machine with a copyright notice specifying the date of permission, the number of copies authorized, and the name of our choir director. Our choir director doesn’t pull many anthems from the church music library. Most come from online research. Many come with available rehearsal sound tracks that we can use for rehearsal at home. We receive an email with a link to an online file that we can play on our phones or computers to assist with rehearsal, which is convenient for me because we no longer have a piano in our home.

At each rehearsal, however, I am a bit quieter and a bit more formal than other members of the choir. I don’t chit chat. I listen as carefully as I can. I make notes with my pencil. I turn over authority to our director. And somehow I imagine that Mr. Nelson is pleased that he taught me well more than a half century ago even if I can no longer recall the tone of his voice.