In the fall of 1964, some 60 years ago, I was a member of the freshman class at North Texas State University, as it was then known. I was pretty clueless as to what I wanted to do in life, and I wound up settling on industrial arts for my degree goal.

During my sophomore year, I was rooming with Emmett Anglin ('68, '72 M.M.) in West Hall. He was a music major (trumpet), but during the spring semester, he borrowed some money from me to buy a classical guitar. Practicing trumpet in the dorm room would have been out of the question, but the soft sound of the guitar, especially played fingerstyle, was OK and was mesmerizing to me. When he was in class and I was back at the dorm, I would pull out the guitar to see if I could decipher the information in the method book Emmett was using to try myself.

In 1969, I joined the Air Force and was accepted into the Officer Training School at Lackland AFB in San Antonio. By August, I was a second lieutenant and was sent to Texas A&M to study meteorology, and I spent three years being a weather forecaster for flight crews at Altus AFB in Oklahoma. However, my main goal was to further teach myself the intricacies of playing classical guitar.

In 1973, I left the USAF, and in the fall, I enrolled at University of Texas at El Paso as a classical guitar major and, in 1977, I graduated from UTEP with a degree in guitar and went on to get a master's degree at what was then East Texas State University. While at ETSU, I met the love of my life, Mary Evelyn Reed, a beautiful soprano singer, flute player and part-time guitar player, and we got married in 1978, had two daughters and two granddaughters.

I was a college classical guitar instructor for 40 years and played a number of public recitals. In 2014, I also began self-publishing arrangements of solo classical guitar and ensemble music with guitar. I have sold these publications to many folks all over the world!

John Pinno ('68)
Temple