3/8/2010

Journal Extra Listen to Glenn Kohr as he plays with the Kansas Wesleyan Jazz Band.

By GORDON D. FIEDLER JR./Salina Journal

U.S. Air Force veteran Glenn Kohr is in a toot over what he considers a disrespectful end to a soldier's service.

He's referring to military funerals and the contemporary practice of using a recorded version of "Taps" or, in some cases, a uniformed honor guard member pretending to play the mournful tune using a fake instrument.

"I don't think it's appropriate that the last salute is out of a boom box," said the octogenarian Kohr. "I really feel it should be a trumpet or a bugle, not an electric bugle."

Kohr is volunteering his services for any military funerals in a 50- to 60-mile radius. He already has an official Air Force uniform that he'll don for the ceremony.

"I'm willing to drive to play for it," he said.

OK, but is he any good? In a word, yes. He and his trumpet have been inseparable for more than 70 years.

"I can't say enough good things about him," said William McMosley, director of bands at Kansas Wesleyan University. "Very few people Glenn's age can play with that range."

McMosley should know. Kohr sits in with Wesleyan's various musical groups as a way to offer encouragement to students young enough to be his grandchildren.

"He helps out where he can," McMosley said. "If there's something they don't quite understand, he'll say, 'Try this, or try that.' Students need to hear that maturity of sound," McMosley said. "The more the kids hear that top, professional sound, the better they're going to be."

Kohr's musical career began on the guitar, but his enthusiasm for that instrument soon hit a low note. His understanding yet musically driven parents agreed to let him switch from strings to brass, no doubt to the relief of McMosley, Wesleyan's instrumental music students and, soon, to departed veterans.

Kohr said he started guitar lessons when he was 10 or 11. The cost: 50 cents, where half of that went toward the purchase of the guitar. This was in the depths of the Great Depression, when 50 cents was worth something.

He eventually broke the news to his mother that he wanted to quit the guitar. The sounds of screaming trumpets in the big bands of the '30s held sway. She played the piano and wanted him and his brother, Jack, to have a musical education.

"She was the driving force," Kohr said. "She was bound and determined."

His parents paid a whopping $40 for his first trumpet.

"I abused the heck out of it," Kohr said.

Jack played the drums and with his mom on piano and him on trumpet, he said they sounded like a Salvation Army band.

The Kohrs were living in Lebanon, Pa., and for awhile he took lessons from a teacher whose studio was in the Lebanon American Legion.

"Dad would drive me up the American Legion. Dad would sit outside and wait for me."

Kohr joined the high school band and took lessons from the band teacher, who quickly exhausted his teaching repertoire on the youngster, so he send him to Lebanon Valley College for instruction.

Howeve, Kohr soon was smitten with sports, and his trumpet almost went the way of a jilted lover.

"I was a big guy and I wanted to be a football player," Kohr said.

In a parental you'll-put-your-eye-out-with-that lecture, his mother nixed his football dreams, saying he might lose some teeth, and that she and has father had too much invested in the trumpet for him to risk destroying his budding embouchure.

"She said, 'Once you have music, you have it for a lifetime.' I never forgot that," Kohr said.

Still, at the time, it was hard.

"I sat on the sidelines (in the band) when I wanted to be out their playing," he said.

Wild blue yonder

A high school band tradition was to bring in guest conductors once a year. One was an Air Force colonel, the leader of the Air Force Band in Washington, D.C.

After the performance, the officer pulled Kohr and two others from the band and promised them slots in the band if they'd enlist after high school.

Kohr did just that, but after basic training, he discovered all the chairs in the trumpet section had been filled. Instead of playing in the flagship Air Force band, he was ordered to Colorado Springs, Colo., the headquarters of the 15th Air Force, and placed in the band there.

But less than a year later, the band was split up: half went to Mountain Home, Idaho, where Kohr hoped he'd be assigned; half went to a place called Smoky Hill Air Force Base, in Salina, Kansas, where he was eventually sent.

Married by now, Kohr put off re-enlisting until the last minute. On his way out of town one morning, he couldn't get himself motivated for the drive to the Wichita recruiter. Back then, the main way out of town was south on Santa Fe, west on Claflin in front of Kansas Wesleyan University and south again on Ninth.

He tried again in the early afternoon.

"I started down Santa Fe and got to the end and that little Ford didn't want to turn right."

Dead ahead was Kansas Wesleyan. By the end of the day, he was former airman and one of Kansas Wesleyan's newest students who hoped to earn a double major in music and business administration.

"I wanted to be a high school band director," Kohr said.

Months from graduating, he discovered to his horror he lacked five hours of biology to earn his music education degree.

"I didn't want to teach them the birds and bees. I wanted to teach them Do Re Me Fa So La Te Do."

But his arguments fell on tone-deaf administrative ears.

So, he ended up in business.

Over the years, he worked for Pepsi, Wyatt Manufacturing and Gilmore-Tatge in Clay Center. He was the business manager at Marymount College and retired after 17 years from School Specialty Supply as an accountant.

Through it all, he never gave up music.

He joined the Salina Municipal Band in 1947 and is a member of the Salina Symphony. He was in a dance band called the Kings Men that played gigs from Kansas City to Goodland. He's been a member of the Heartland of America Band for a number of years.

Before it disbanded, the Shrine Band claimed Kohr as a member.

And now, he shares his musical talents with Kansas Wesleyan students.

That association started with the arrival of McMosley, who also directors the municipal band.

"We got to discussing things and he wanted to keep his chops up in the winter," McMosley said. He invited Kohr to attend a band practice. That was about four years ago and he's been showing up at rehearsals ever since.

"If you took my horn away, it would be like taking a bottle from an alcoholic," Kohr said. "You'd have a hell of a fight."

nGordon D. Fiedler Jr. can be reached at 822-1407 or by e-mail at gfiedler@salina.com

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