How to tell the story of this picture? To tell you everything that this wonderful man did for me would take too much space. I will try to tell you enough so that you can get the gist of it and so that you can see that sometimes all it takes is one person to change your life.
The man standing with me in this picture is Robert Jarrett. To this day I still call him Mr. Jarrett even though we have known each other for almost thirty years. Mr. Jarrett was my band director from the sixth through tenth grades. When I left grade school I was sent to Iroquois Middle School, which was located far away from where I lived. I was sent there to promote ethnic diversity in the school community in Louisville. What a lucky break for me!
For some reason Mr. Jarrett took a real interest in me from the start. I was moderately talented, but not so much that I stood out a lot. Thinking back now it was just one of those connections that you can’t really put your finger on. Sometime during the seventh grade Mr. Jarrett offered to give me trumpet lessons. He was a trumpet player himself and wanted to help me get better. The kicker is that he gave me these lessons for free. We would stay after school and work on the Arban book. We started on page one and worked forward. After our lessons he would drive me home. He lived on the other side of town from me.
Mr. Jarrett taught me for two years. In the ninth grade he did two things that changed me forever. First, he bought me a Vincent Bach Bb trumpet. It was a medium large bore and had a 72 bell. He paid for it with his own money. The second thing he did was tell me that he couldn’t teach me anymore because he felt that I had progressed past his ability to help me. You might think that would be the end of it, but Mr. Jarrett decided to pay for more lessons out of his own teachers salary with a more experienced teacher.
There are certainly other lessons I learned from him. I learned about racial equality, humanity, kindness, and much more. Like I said, it would take too long to tell it all. Through it all he used to joke with me about the doors he had opened. The greatest thing in all of this is that those doors have never stopped opening. What a guy!
Andrew
PS – Check out the great tie he was wearing. The man sure is stylish!
