The "Music Beginnings" letter (spring 2011) brought back a lot of memories of my years at UNT. As a 25-year-old Arkansas band director, I was told that North Texas was the place to go for graduate work. I worked on my master's in music education during the summers and completed it in 1967. Returning to the campus in 1969, I was a teaching assistant working on a Ph.D. in music education. I was always impressed by the faculty as people who cared about the students and were always available for questions and concerns.

The names John Haynie, David McGuire, Maurice McAdow, Leon Brown, Clyde Miller (my horn teacher), William Latham and Frank Mainous (who suffered through my piano playing for the piano proficiency exam!) stand out in my memory.

Several of these men are gone now, but their inspiration and dedication to teaching will be remembered by the many students they taught.

Joel Duskin ('67 M.M.Ed.)
Shreveport, La.

I came to North Texas as a junior transfer into the music school in 1941 because I was attracted by the A Cappella Choir and what Wilfred Bain was doing for music in Denton. Dr. Bain promptly established the choir as both an instrument for great music and for promotion of the department he hoped to build.

There were, in 1940 and a number of following years, two choirs in the department. The Chapel Choir was the feeding group for the piece de resistance, the A Cappella Choir. In 1940-41, Frank McKinley conducted the Chapel Choir and Bain conducted the A Cappella group. As a middling quality tenor, I was first assigned to the Chapel Choir, and Frank McKinley was my voice teacher. By my second semester in the program, I was invited to the A Cappella Choir, and I then toured with them in the spring of 1942 and in 1942-43. For all of us vocalists in the budding program, it was a wonderful, wonderful time. I am rather sure McKinley did not take over the A Cappella Choir until Bain’s departure for the University of Indiana.

Carter Murphy ('43, '46),
Professor Emeritus of
economics, SMU