Benton teacher loses battle to
illness at 50
By SUSAN SCHWARTZ
Press Enterprise Writer
BENTON -- Columbia County's music world lost one
of its leading voices Friday when Benton band director Richard Martin died at
his home.
Martin, 50, of 230 Third St., had been fighting a
rare form of cancer for 16 months.
"We knew this was inevitable," said
Louis Piazza, Millville's band director. "But it's been hard."
Directors in Columbia County remembered Martin as
a mentor whom they nicknamed "Papa Rick." He was a talented French
horn player, a tireless organizer and a practical joker.
Martin was everywhere. In addition to directing
school students, he directed the Catawissa Military Band, the Sacred Chorale
and the Benton Christian Church Choir.
He was president of the Columbia County Band
Directors Association, which he helped found.
And he was always immensely popular with his
students, they said.
Piazza said that every time Martin directed a
band festival, his students would sing "Happy Birthday" to him as a
joke -- whether it was his birthday or not.
"Sometimes he'd have four or five
'birthdays' a year," Piazza chuckled.
Martin loved making analogies between music and
food for his students, he said.
"He'd tell them, 'That phrase you're playing
needs to be more soupy. You're playing it like vegetable soup. It needs to be
more like cream of mushroom.'"
He always went out of his way to help even the
slowest students in his band, he said. He'd often come to school early and stay
late to give youngsters lessons, and would invite them to his house for extra
tutoring.
French horn to kazoos
Martin started the Columbia County Band Festival,
Piazza said. Until then, Millville and a few other schools were regularly left
out of other regional band festivals, he said.
He and Piazza began playing practical jokes on
each other at those festivals, he said.
Once Martin was directing a piece that required
students to tap or clap a rhythm midway through, he said. But during rehearsal,
when he raised his hand and signaled for the tapping to begin, he was greeted
with silence. Piazza had told the students ahead of time to refuse to tap.
Martin retaliated the next year when he passed
out kazoos to the students, which they played instead of their usual
instruments when Piazza stood up to direct them.
Ralph Wolfgang, Southern's former band director,
said Martin showed talent back in fourth grade when Wolfgang first began
teaching him the French horn.
"He was exceptional," he said.
When Wolfgang said that one day, he was surprised
when he raised his hand to have the band start playing and instead was regaled
by the students singing "Happy Anniversary." It was his 25th year
directing. Martin had set the whole thing up, complete with a plaque honoring
the occasion.
By the time Martin was in high school, Wolfgang
had him helping to teach younger students during special summer classes at
Knoebels. Under Wolfgang's guidance, Martin learned to teach and play every
band instrument.
"He just had so much talent," Wolfgang
said. "He loved it, and he loved band."
When Martin graduated from college, he helped
fill in for Wolfgang during Wolfgang's sabbatical.
'Papa Rick'
After he began working at Benton, he went on to
help not just students, but other band directors.
When Berwick's Ron Wasser first came to the
county as a new band director, Martin made a point of calling him every once in
a while to make sure everything was going well, Wasser said. Martin gave him
advice about how to make sure his students were ready for county band.
Berwick students always came back from county
saying Martin was their favorite director there, Wasser said.
When word of his illness began spreading, the
musical community rallied around Martin.
One of Martin's former students, now a
professional musician in Boston, came back to arrange a concert in his honor.
The Columbia County Band Directors Association
commissioned a composer to create a piece of music in Martin's honor.
Piazza said he had just gotten word from the
composer, Sam Hazo, about the piece's theme and style. It was to be entitled
"Echos."
"He said the theme was that the more we make
our lives sound, the more it will resound, and keep echoing in the years
ahead," Piazza said.
But Martin died before he could tell him about
it.
Still, students in the future will find that
music in Columbia County has changed because of Martin's work here, he said.
"Rick instilled in us that the kids are
Number One," Piazza said. "If that means we take in one extra player
at county band so no one is left behind, we'll do it. If it means bending the
rules slightly, discreetly, to help a student, we will.
"We're there to make it right for the kids."
This
page updated December 25, 2005
