Dick STAFFORD

Our friend and talented opera singer Patricia Dowell Scimeca died in NYC recently. I believe she was the most talented female singer during our years at GHS and in Acapella Choir. In the decades since, she has held leading roles as a sopranno in many New York opera productions. She has also inspired many youthful singers to greatness and perfection. I have shared my thoughts and love for Tricia in a poem, which I would like to share with her and our friends from GHS:


From Where Did It Come?

From where did it come, that desire to sing, and write and teach? A gift to us to share there on our stage, our pages, or in our life to reach.

Was it the lightning bugs there on Nash Street on a warm July night, the magic twinkle in the black summer air, bringing us a spark of light?

Maybe it came from water fountains in the theatre lobby at GHS? Put there magically by our mentors Ingram, Newkirk, Henderson, the best!

Naw, it started way before that for us, the desire for song and drama to seek. It started while searching for magic tad poles along the ripples of Duck Creek.

Children of the fifties, our taste buds pricked by ice cream from Sabine, and movies at the Plaza, watching kings and queens on the silver screen.

Who knows where the desire came from, to open our mouths for song or line? The arias, operas, musicals, plays, books, stories of life now like fine wine.

These Super Trouper moments, lighting us momentarily there in the dark, as we played another character, in another life, as in our 10th year, The Lark.

Vocal warm ups, a thousand opening nights, our costumes sweaty wet, have all come our way, from Garland to Georgia and New York’s The Met.

From where did it come? The quest and drive, crossing the stage to wings? From my Kristal and your Michael, gifts to us: to act, and write and sing!

Each day they have been here for us, our steadfast partners in love and life, They hold each of our hands…like kids, like children, your husband, my wife.

How lucky we are, you and I, to have had these journeys along our way, And I don’t know from where it came, but I love you Trish, all I gots to say.

Friends Always,
Dick





We all have such fond memories of our youthful days in Garland, Texas and at GHS. When I open my yearbooks and look at the happy faces peering out at me, now nearly sixty, the memories come back in a huge gush. The spark -and even flames- of our teenage years, the teachers, the events, all of it, were golden...just like our school color! All of us have flown on, like courageous owls, to other lives beyond our school, and yet we share a warm and supportive curiosity for how we have changed, grown, succeeded and failed at times.


Some of our friends have gone on to a more perfect life beyond our world. We miss them and our hearts ache. But the wisdom of an owl would tell us that love and care will see us through. Each experience we had with our friends remains forever a part of who we are and who we are yet to become. The kindness in Randy's face, his gentleness, the comedy in Irwin's antics, Beeson's cheeks blown up while puffing on a sax held tightly in his hands...all of these and more, have made us who we are.

It was a grand, grand time!

--Dick Stafford

My books at Amazon.com and B&N.com:

Beyond the Beach: Stories for Fathers and Sons
The Funeral Club
The Caspian Conspiracy (w/ Georgia writer Nora Hatchett)
Summer at Hope's Croft
From Risk to Reason (w/Texas writer Mike Fitsko)

My plays/musicals:

The Funeral Club next production in Feb. 2010 in Statesboro, GA at Averitte Arts Center.

Yours, a romantic Civil War drama next production in McKinney, Texas in Nov. 2009 and Garland, Texas in Dec. 2009.

Best Foot Forward, a musical, based on interviews of grand parents by middle school students told in song, dance, poems and personal stories of postive character experiences.

BLIND WILLIE, a stage musical about Georgia's first blues composer Blind Willie McTell, guitarist and performer from 1920s-1940s. McTell's music has been covered by the Allman Bros Band and many others through out the decades. To premier summer 2011 in Savannah, GA.

DOVE: The Musical, based on Robin Lee Graham's world sailing adventure in 1965 recorded in three National Geographic magazines will premier in Atlanta in April 2010.

I have written the following poem in honor (and now memory) of the passing of our beloved teacher, Jim "Coach" Henderson. Though I was unable to make it to his Garland funeral, I hope the reading of the poem at his funeral kept me included in the celebration of his life and his extraordinary impact he had on young people during his career.








How sad it was to recently learn of the passing (Oct. 5, 2010) of Mr. Paul Bourek, teacher and director of the Fighting Owl Band when we were students. I recall Mr. and Mrs. Bourek attending our 30th reunion in downtown Dallas and dancing the night away, happy and full of celebration! The Owl Band over-flowed with energy and pride and surprises. I will forever fondly remember my fellow drummers Jon Six, Bobby Baker, Roger King, and others who REALLY knew drumming, and the importance of keeping the band on beat. My nickname, Gomer, from slipping on new leather shoes on a shinny stage floor during a band concert, cymbals crashing wildly at the wrong moment, followed me throughout my life as a "Bandie." Memories of the NEW Band Hall, a horse galloping through marching practice in the front parking lot, trips to Corpus, Mr. Bourek's poignant directions when we errored, his great smile, his tremendous personal support of me during a Youth Against Drug Rally on Flag Day in June 1969, a truly meaningful conversation with me about that event as I graduated from GHS, and the entire Bourek family's love of music...will stay with me forever. Also now, learning of Vicki Bourek Francoeur's passing in March of this year, along with brother Bill's death, is further saddening to us. But there is much to celebrate as a life closes. The impact the Bourek's made on us as young people, working hard to demonstrate the value of practice and goal setting, and a love of music very different from the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and Herman's Hermits blasting away in our 1960s cars, molded many of us to be who were are. And now, I am left to wonder what to do the yellowing plastic spats and ragged, white fingerless gloves, a left over from my time as a member of the Owl Band. Time, like all of us, marches on!