Jduy Harkrider

Longtime band director recalls 38-year career

Greenbrier Middle School band director Judy Harkrider stands in the junior high band room. She will retire this year after 38 years as a band director, including 30 in Greenbrier. A drop-in retirement reception for Harkrider is scheduled for 2-4 p.m. April 30 in the Greenbrier High School cafeteria.
Greenbrier Middle School band director Judy Harkrider stands in the junior high band room. She will retire this year after 38 years as a band director, including 30 in Greenbrier. A drop-in retirement reception for Harkrider is scheduled for 2-4 p.m. April 30 in the Greenbrier High School cafeteria.

Judy Harkrider of Conway got teary-eyed more than once as she talked about retiring as a band director after 38 years, because it’s not just what she does for a living; it’s her life.

She fell in love with band in the seventh grade in Searcy, and she fell in love with music again — and the guy behind her in marching band — in college in Conway.

Harkrider is Greenbrier Middle School’s band director; her husband, Robbie, is a band director in Vilonia, where she started her career.

“When you teach band, that’s your life. You’re there early and stay late. If a kid needs help, I stay,” she said. “That’s the hard part, leaving the kids. Those seniors — we’ve had them seven years. You get attached.”

And they get attached, too.

Greenbrier junior Hannah Weidner, a trombone player, said she was disappointed to hear that Harkrider is retiring.

“I cried like a baby,” Weidner said. “She’s been my teacher since sixth grade in beginning band. She’s been one of my favorite teachers ever, but I know she’s been teaching for a really long time. She definitely played her part as a band director and definitely had an impact on me.

“She’s just always been so friendly, and even outside of class, if you ever needed anyone to talk to about anything, … she’s always been there. I’ve always called her the momma of the band. Even if you look remotely sad or are having a bad day, she’s always there to talk to you about anything. She can just put the biggest smile on anyone’s face.”

The 17-year-old said she will adjust to a new band director for her senior year.

“It’s crazy, and it’s going to be a lot to live up to her expectations, but I know somebody’s going to try their hardest,” Weidner said.

Greenbrier ninth-grader Sophia Ware, 14, said her and her bandmates’ reactions were the same when they heard Harkrider was leaving.

“We all cried,” she said.

Sophia said Harkrider is “like another mom,” and the student practiced with the high school students in the summer and also helped shelve music, clean and organize.

“I know her not as just a band director but as a person, and it’s going to make me very sad not to have her around as a constant source of advice and mother-henning,” Sophia said.

Harkrider said she isn’t really ready to retire.

“My ears are worn out,” she said. “I’m starting to have problems with them, and it’s time to give them a rest. I just didn’t think it would be so soon.”

Harkrider, 61, realized what she said and laughed.

“Well, it’s been 38 years, but I wasn’t quite ready.”

It all started when she took band in seventh grade in Searcy,

and she picked the clarinet. She got out of band, but she kept hanging around the band room, having bonded with the other band members.

“When you join band, you get an instant family,” she said. “It’s a bond — a very strong one.”

When she was in 10th grade, the band director told her he needed a percussionist, and he even offered private lessons if she’d come back as a drummer. She took him up on it.

“I knew that’s what I wanted to do, and I never turned back,” she said.

Well, she had a brief idea that she wanted to be on the radio. She started at the State College of Arkansas, which became the University of Central Arkansas after her first semester, as a radio-television major. She played percussion in the college band. After one semester, she changed her major to music education.

After getting her degree from UCA, she landed her first job in the Vilonia School District. She still remembers the dress she wore for her first day on the job because it was a special moment, she said.

“It was so tiny back then,” she said of the district. Harkrider taught band, high school choir and elementary music. The high school band had only 24 students. Harkrider started a beginning band in the district, too.

After eight years, she made the move to Greenbrier 30 years ago. She started as junior high band director.

“I also did the high school choir and fifth- and sixth-grade general music. Over the years, it phased into all band,” she said.

Robbie Harkrider taught band in the Greenbrier District, too, for 15 years. He was the high school band director while she was the junior high band director at that time. Harkrider said they still talk about band at home every night, until one of them — usually her husband — says it’s time to change the subject.

She’s now in charge of Greenbrier’s ninth-grade band, but she assists with seventh grade and high school. (And, yes, she gets a few head turns when she goes back with the percussionists and picks up the drumsticks.)

She also works with percussion and saxophone players in the sixth-grade beginning band. This year, she said, a grandchild of one of her former students is in band.

That’s a lot of kids and a lot of memories.

Harkrider has celebrated with former students at their weddings and over the births of children, and hers; cried with them at the funerals of their parents; visited students at the hospital; and even mourned the deaths of former students. There were senior cookouts at her house and trips to competitions where the students received awards. They’ve played in weather so cold the valves on the brass instruments stuck, and so hot that a student passed out during a parade.

Once in Vilonia, a surprise thunderstorm at a football game sent the band running into a small physical-education building, and the crowd followed.

“Everybody was sopping wet,” she said. “We started playing, and [the fans] started cheering. That little old PE building was just packed,” she said.

The most embarrassing moment, she said, was playing at a Vilonia homecoming game. The administrators asked her to split the band, putting half on one side of the field, half on the other side, so the homecoming royalty could come through the middle.

When the band started playing the national anthem, one side couldn’t see the drum major, “and they came in exactly one measure too late. We played the whole thing like that.”

They later learned the crowd was singing, and most people didn’t notice, Harkrider said, but the band members were mortified.

“The drum major was crying afterward; she was just embarrassed.” They still laugh about it, Harkrider said.

She recalled the days when school, in general, was more laid-back.

“We had time to do fun things together — have a Christmas party, rent the skating rink, or we’d take them on a bus to go to Little Rock to see a movie. Thirty-eight years ago, 30 years ago, it was a different day and time,” she said.

She remembered a trip with her Greenbrier band students to Woolly Hollow State Park.

“It had rained — a lot — the night before, and the creek was really rolling,” she said. “We played in all the waterfalls in the little creek for hours. The kids rode down it like a water slide. Everyone was scraped up and bruised up from the rocks, but it was so much fun and one of the best days ever.”

A few years ago, Harkrider invited the Liverpool Legends, a Beatles tribute band in Branson, Missouri, to Greenbrier High School. She said it was a great experience for the students and her.

“I have loved The Beatles forever,” she said. Harkrider said that as a child, she saw the Beatles make their first live appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on Feb. 9, 1964. “I love The Beatles. I have Beatles posters all over my [band] room.”

The students got to play a concert for the public with the Liverpool Legends.

“We had so much fun. They treated these kids like they were professionals. [The students] got a little touch of show business,” she said.

Harkrider is a member of the Conway Symphony Orchestra Board of Directors, and she suggested bringing the Liverpool Legends to UCA for a concert.

“Reynolds [Performance Hall] was absolutely packed,” she said.

Band is a good way for kids to feel part of something, she said, and it’s a lifelong bond.

Even though it’s been 43 years since she was in high school, Harkrider said, she still keeps in touch with her former classmates and band members.

A come-and-go retirement reception for Harkrider is scheduled from 2-4 p.m. April 30 in the Greenbrier High School cafeteria. Harkrider said she would love for former students to drop by.

“It’s a lifetime of memories, and I have met so many great kids that are now my friends,” she said.

Angela Halter Johnson of Vilonia, her brother and one of her two sisters all had Judy Harkrider for a band director when they were growing up.

“It was when Vilonia was in the very beginning stages,” Johnson said. A mother of four, Johnson’s 18- and 15-year-old sons have Robbie Harkrider as a band director now, “so it’s really cool,” she said.

Although Vilonia and Greenbrier are rivals, Johnson said she remembers a football game when the bands played a song together.

Johnson said she was sorry to hear that Harkrider is retiring.

“They’re going to miss a good band director,” she said.

Harkrider said she will miss it all, too.

“There are days that are hard, and I know I’m doing what I need to do. There’s no good time to leave; it’s always going to be hard.

“There’s no better job — I mean, you get rewards in spades.”

Harkrider said it thrills her to look at the faces of her students, “when they have been struggling with a piece of music, and all of a sudden it comes together, and you look out there, and they’re smiling. They know,” she said, nodding.

Harkrider teaches a night class at Arkansas State University-Beebe, showing elementary education majors how to integrate music into their classrooms, and was just hired again for the fall.

“It’s not band, but it’s music,” she said. “When God closes one door, he opens another, so I don’t know what’ll come along,” she said.

“I keep reminding myself of a quote I saw a few weeks back from Dr. Seuss. It read, ‘Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.’ And I will smile, but a few tears might sneak in. It’s been a great 38 years, and I’d do it over again in a heartbeat.”

Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.

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