Prairie Grove Band Celebrates 50 Years

PRAIRIE GROVE — The Prairie Grove High School Band is calling all past members to help celebrate 50 years of instrumental music.

Anyone who played in the band, no matter what grade or how many years or how long ago, is invited to play in a mass band before the Prairie Grove football game on Friday, Sept. 27. The band will meet at 6:30 p.m. by the band stands at the northwest end of the field.

Gerry Nichols, high school band director, said the band will play the Star Spangled Banner, the Prairie Grove Alma Mater and the Prairie Grove Fight Song. Former and current band members will be paired together by instrument. Extra instruments will be available.

Prairie Grove’s first band instructor alerted Nichols to the upcoming anniversary in a letter to the school last year.

Francis Medaris was preparing to start graduate work in music at the University of Arkansas in the summer of 1963, when he learned that Prairie Grove did not have an instrumental music program in the school system.

Medaris, who graduated from Lincoln High School, offered to start a band program at the school for one period a day, three days each week, for a salary of $60 per month for the first year. If the program was successful, he would continue a second year for two periods a day, three days a week, for $120 per month.

The school board agreed to Medaris’ offer and the school started a band program for fourth and fifth grade students during the first year.

In his letter, Medaris noted that he received only $5 per day the first year. He recalled he was driving a VW Beetle that got 35 miles to the gallon and gas cost only 18-cents per gallon.

“I guess the real incentive to me was not a monetary one but rather the challenge of starting a program from the ground up,” Medaris wrote. Prior to starting his graduate program, he had taught for four years in an established band program for the Cassville, Mo., school system.

Medaris taught band for two years at Prairie Grove, earned his master’s degree in music and then moved on to full- time band and choral positions in Branson, Mo., and later at Crowder College in Neosho, Mo.