So I’ve gotten to watch my husband, Nick, do some pretty cool things with the Recording Academy, but what he did Friday was the best!
Let me back up for a second and tell you that we both went to high school at Plano West Senior High and we were both in band. (No, we weren’t high school sweethearts.) I played flute (terribly) and Nick played saxophone and guitar. Also, we were part of the charter class of our high school. We got to choose the colors (royal blue, black and silver) and the mascot (wolves), among other things.
Nick was set on a future career in medicine and signed up to take a clinical rotation class in his senior year. Three days in to the class he suddenly walked out and went straight to the counselor’s office. He decided that medicine wasn’t going to make him happy and he needed to study something else. He decided on music.
By the time he made the decision, Nick had missed all of the college application deadlines. He talked to our band director, Mr. Hannah, who promptly made a phone call to the UNT jazz studies department and basically got Nick in to college.
Most of you know the rest of the story – 2 years at UNT, transfer to Tx St. to study recording, graduate, get mastering engineer job at Terra Nova Digital Audio, get elected to the board of governors for the Recording Academy. And now fast forward to Friday – 10 years after we graduated high school.
Nick presented a grant check from the Grammy Foundation and a Grammy Signature School Gold Award to the faculty and students of the Plano West music department. One of those teachers was our band director Mr. Hannah.
It was a great day! After presenting the award, Nick stayed at school all day and talked to students about having a career in the music industry.
The award was one of only 7 merit-based grants given to public high schools in the country and the money will go directly to the music department (which calls itself the Wolfgang Pack). We’re so proud of our high school because we found out that the graduating class, which is just under 1,000 students, earned over $9 million in college scholarships!
Anyway, there were lots of “photo ops” with the giant check, the award and the mayor’s proclamation, so here are a few.
Here’s a story the local paper did about the day: http://www.planostar.com/articles/2011/05/23/plano_star-courier/news/9071.txt