TBT ~ "When I Grow Up"

Kiki sitting among boxes from an earlier move

Sorting through old papers and boxes to move has only one redeeming value.  Occasionally I run across something that makes me smile.  Here's what my daughter wrote toward the end of third grade, using her very best penmanship.

When I Grow Up

When I grow up I want to be like my mother.  She doesn't go to work, but she does work.  She works for a man.  He teachs music.  My mother plays the piano very well.  My mother is a room mother this year.  She enjoys having partys for us.  I think I would like to be a room mother when I grow up.  Sandra L. Jacobs

April 29, 1969

That man I worked for, the man who taught music, was A. R. Casavant, well-known in the marching band world.  I played in concert band and marching band under his direction when I was in high school.  When she wrote this, the work I was doing for him was drawing pen-and-ink illustrations for his books on marching bands.  My drawings were used in at least two of his books published in the 1960s.

Here's the Chattanooga High School marching band in action.  I played the glockenspiel, but I can't tell which one is me in this routine we filmed late one afternoon in the fall of 1957 at the stadium of the University of Chattanooga (now the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga).

By the way, my daughter did grow up to be a room mother.  All through their elementary school years, she worked with her children's teachers and school staff.