Many school districts have a teacher or a handful of teachers who have seemingly been there forever. These teachers end up teaching multiple generations, and their names are known throughout the community.
In Cabot, Joe Trusty is one of those teachers. Trusty will retire this year after 30 years as the Cabot High School band director, having touched the lives of countless students and Cabot Panthers fans with his musical direction.
Trusty said he is one of the lucky ones who knew from a young age what he wanted to do with his life. Growing up in Paris, Arkansas, Trusty started in band in the sixth grade playing trumpet.
“I played my brother’s hand-me-down Conn cornet and got my first real trumpet with I was a 10th-grader,” Trusty said. “Growing up in church, I sang all the time, so the interest in music was always there. Both of my older brothers were in band when they were in school, so it was just assumed that I would be in band as well.”
One year after starting his school band career, he knew he wanted to be a band director when he grew up.
“I knew in the seventh grade,” he said. “I’ve never wavered from that, and I’ve never regretted it.”
After high school, Trusty enrolled in Arkansas Tech University’s music-education program.
“At the time, that was the best school in the state for my degree program,” he said. “I didn’t know of any others, to be honest with you. There probably were, but I didn’t know they existed.”
When Trusty arrived at Arkansas Tech in Russellville, Gene Witherspoon was the band director, but Witherspoon died in Trusty’s sophomore year after being at the school for nearly 30 years. That’s when Hal Cooper stepped into the band-director spot.
“[Witherspoon] is actually the one who recruited me to go to school there,” Trusty said. “Hal Cooper took over while I was still there, but it was actually after I had gotten out of college that I started depending on Hal for information and techniques.”
Trusty said he continued visiting with and learning from Cooper for a while, watching how he directed bands and trying to soak in as much knowledge as he could.
After college, Trusty taught one year at Prairie Grove Junior High School before landing in Cabot.
“I came to Cabot in 1983, … did three years of junior high band here and then moved up to the high school in 1986,” he said. “I count myself to be very fortunate to have stayed here all those years. In all honesty, when I came to Cabot in ’83, it was a little one-horse town. There were only three places to eat in town. You had to go to Beebe to eat at Pizza Hut. I thought I’d be here for three or four years, get some experience, then move on to something else. I’ve seen a lot of change.”
Trusty said he doesn’t know how many students he has taught and led in band over the past 30 years. It’s hard to figure out the math when you have students for several years in a row, but he may make an attempt at it soon.
“I have an annual from every year I’ve taught,” he said. “One of the things I’m going to do before I pack everything up and walk out the door is, I’m going to go through all of my annuals and look at the band pictures and try to count the seniors. They’re the ones who actually survived. It’ll be in the thousands, I’m sure.”
Being a band director is a blast, Trusty said. Not only does he get to teach his craft, but he gets to practice along with the students.
“That’s the fun part,” Trusty said. “Just last hour [in class], I got my trumpet out and played along with them. You can’t do that in too many other areas.”
Trusty said it’s hard to pick favorite shows when you’ve been at a district for 30 years. His students have played so much music between marching band and concert band, and marching competitions have changed a lot over the years, he said.
“There are several years’ worth of favorites,” he said. “For years, we have done theme-based shows. The last four years, we started competitive marching band, which is kind of different. But previous years, my two favorites were the year we did a Chicago program — the group, not the musical — and one year we did a Chuck Mangione show that was really good.”
Competitive marching band has been a fun new twist for Trusty, he said, and the past four years have been full of interesting new experiences.
“All of the last four years of shows have been a whole lot of fun to do because they were so different from what I was used to,” he said. “Competitive marching band is quite a bit different from what we’ve been doing, so it’s new and exciting to me. It’s a whole new set of skills that I’ve had to learn and have tried to help the kids learn, so it’s been good for all of us.”
Rusty Hart, current assistant band director, will step into Trusty’s vacated position next year. Trusty said he is glad the students will have someone they already know leading the band, and he plans to give Hart room as Hart moves into the top spot.
“I’m going to be really careful about being around the kids,” Trusty said. “I’ll sneak in and watch a game and sneak back out. I want to know what it’s like sitting up in the bleachers!”
One of the best parts about teaching high school band, Trusty said, is the constant positive turnover in students. It is sad to see seniors graduate, but you always know there is another group of students coming in. Even after graduation, Trusty said, he enjoys seeing former students and keeping up with them on social media.
“Every year, when the senior class out of band graduates, I always miss them for a while. But what’s amazing about them leaving is that the next group always steps up and takes over and carries on and does what has to be done. … It’s a confidence that you know the students will step up,” he said.
Trusty won’t be putting his trumpet away once he steps off the Cabot High School campus for the last time as a teacher, though. He plays at Mount Carmel Baptist Church, occasionally plays weddings and is part of a jazz band that gets together frequently to play.
Retirement will be a strange adjustment, Trusty said, but he has a plan to ease into his new way of life. He has some home renovations to tackle, he wants to learn to weld, and he and his wife plan to travel eventually.
“I’ll miss the kids tremendously. That’s what keeps you going in this line of work. I’ll miss making music [with them]. I won’t miss bus rides,” he said. “There’s so much that goes on, and it’s all centered around the kids.”