END OF AN ERA AT ARP | Band director Chris Cook to retire after 30 years at school

ARP – Under the “band” section of the Arp ISD website, there’s a section called “What are the benefits of being in band?”

Here are just the four categories in that section:

• Success in society;
• Success in school;
• Success in developing intelligence;
• Success in life.

When Chris Cook accepted the position as Arp High School band director in 1994, that section didn’t exist. Heck, neither did the website. Nobody else’s did, either : nobody really HAD a website.

“It’s changed,” Cook told ETBlitz.com on Thursday. “But yeah, I’ve had a good time. Everything’s changed. Society’s changed a little bit. Our school, of course… we’re 3A now, but we’re just a re-classification of 2A, is what we really are. We were 2A then, but we were a smaller district at the time. A little bitty band hall.”

Chris Cook will retire at the end of this school year after three decades of hard work; three decades of fall football; three decades of “is June here yet?”; three decades of friendships, mentorships and bonds; three decades of building bonds with students that will continue to go on, long after his career at Arp concludes with Tuesday night’s ultimate, final spring concert at the Clark Wayne Roberts Auditorium, a 6:30 p.m. start.

Has it hit yet?

“Yeah, a little bit,” Cook nodded. Then briefly, just briefly, just a few seconds later, he added: “Sometimes.”

How it started

Cook, the University of Texas at Tyler graduate, recalled his arrival at Arp back in 1994.

“It doesn’t seem like it should be 30 years. But I don’t feel like I should be 55 years old, either,” he laughed.

He began to fold back through the memories.

“It was my second year to teach. Wasn’t real happy where I was at. I told my wife that I was going to do one more year where we were, and that if something else didn’t open, we might have to be open to moving, because that was not where I wanted to build what I wanted to have as a future.

“(Arp) opened up in the summer, and I thought, ‘You know what? I’m going to give it a try.’ And Arp had always been the competitor, kind of, for Overton. I graduated from Overton. And I thought, ‘Here I go. I’m gonna be a traitor, and go work at Arp.’ But no, I never intended to be here 30 years. I didn’t want to hodge-podge, jump around a lot. Same way people are with churches. I didn’t want to do a lot of jumpin.’ Get somewhere, stay there, be stable. Changes are going to happen – go through the changes. I thought, do four, five years. I’ll go somewhere else.”

One year led to another, and to another, Cook said.

“There were a lot of offers in the first 10, 15 years here,” he recalled. “But after so many, ‘No,’ you tell ‘em, ‘No,’ ‘No’… And they quit calling. Some of them, I even interviewed. And I just didn’t feel like it was the right thing to do. Might have been more money, bigger schools. I just didn’t want to leave this community.”

The band’s the thing

Three decades have passed and Cook’s mind hasn’t changed. If anything, he’s more convinced now than ever that he and wife Melynda made the right decision.

“This is a very special place,” he said, again taking a moment to ensure that those of us in the room gathered the weight of his words. “Not a lot of people know that. I guess if you’re from Arp, you know it. The community is special. The kids are special. It’s just a great place to be. It’s kind of the hidden gem of East Texas that people don’t know about. And it’s growing, getting a little bit bigger. But it’s still really special, a special place. It’s family here.

…I’ve always been accepted as one of them, the whole time I’ve been here. I’m more of an Arp Tiger than I’ll ever be an Overton Mustang anymore. Need me? Call me. I’m around.”

Arp’s band has been more than “around.”

The Tigers have been more than “good” under Cook and assistant band director Christy Rodriguez for a long time, and now for the last year, Cody Sturdivant has joined the fold.

The Tigers have been great.

Recently, for the fourth straight year, they had a sweep of one ratings – four consecutive years of being a sweepstakes band – as of March, at University Interscholastic League Classification 3A concert and sight reading. Their UIL Region 21 Marching Contest excellence was just that – ones across the board.

Hey, if you’re gonna go out, go out in style.

And he’ll do that with Tuesday’s spring concert, for those who want to see Cook take the podium one. Last. Time.

That moment won’t be lost on him, either.

“I don’t take getting on the podium in front of them for granted anymore,” he said. “You don’t think about it being the last time, or this is closing the chapter. When you do it for so long, it almost becomes identity. How do you not be who you’ve been? It’s a great thing. I love teaching. But it’s the hours. The fall is a killer. It’s rough. It’s a lot of hours. It’s a young man’s game; it’s not an old person’s game anymore.

All of those “falls”

So, when does a band director start preparing for the next football season?

“If I was going to be here next year,” Cook explained, “I would’ve started planning for fall in April.

“I’m thinking show music, thinking show design, thinking color guard colors, that kind of thing – rewriting what I want to tweak in the music, if there’s something I don’t like, messing with that. You unplug for a few weeks during the summer, you try to. You need that time down, and your family deserves you NOT being a band director for a while. But it’s 365 days. It’s a cycle.

“And that’s the oddest thing, that’s what hit me first, not that I wouldn’t be in front of the kids, but that my cycle got broken up.”

Sturdivant will assume Cook’s position as band director next school year. And he’s already wearing the hat, so to speak, for fall prep.

“He’s starting the cycle,” Cook said. “And I let him know that that’s what I’d be doing at this point and time, and that’s what he wanted to do.

“He’s already started charting. The music’s picked. I’ve seen his drill design, he’s shown me things. We’ve talked it through. He asked for input. It’s fun. He’s doing the work. It’s nice not having to do the work,” he laughed. “Parts of the drill look like me; parts of it don’t, so it’s pretty neat. Cody is fired up and ready to go.”

Timing the thing out

Ever wonder what goes into planning out how long the band’s portion of a halftime show will last?

Cook plans it based on his contest timing, as do most directors.

“If you’re in under five minutes (in contest), you get a rating dock (Constitution and Contest Rules – University Interscholastic League). Over eight, you get a rating dock. I like to play it very safe. …If you’ve charted a 7-minute, 50-second show, and you don’t kick that thing at the right time, or what if your kids decide to take something a little bit slower – it’s just not worth it. Timing is real important. I used to be consumed by it, and make sure I wasn’t pushing the threshold either direction. I was in a comfort zone.”

Relationships with coaches

How important is it for band directors and coaches to get along?

It’s essential, Cook said.

“Athletic directors and band directors need to be friends, they need to work together, because everybody can win,” he said. “At a small school, everybody needs to win. It’s good for the school; it’s good for the community; it’s good for morale. We share kids. And when everybody shares, everybody wins. You build something special. I feel like that’s what we’ve got.”

Busy-ness, and overlapping

Everybody multitasks at their jobs, Cook admits.

Band directors just have to – really be good at it.

“My wife – she’s wonderful,” Cook said. “She knows when band camp starts in August, ‘I’ll see you in Thanksgiving.’ Some years? ‘I’ll see you in Christmas.’ I’m irritable more in the fall, not sleeping as much, working more hours and you’re stressed. There’s things out of your control. It’s just like, wow – we’re planning on taking a trip to see the trees change colors somewhere, other than pines, because we’ve never had the chance.”

Many might remember the Dunkin’ Donuts commercial where the DD man is so busy, he meets HIMSELF coming in and out of the house (Dunkin Donuts 1984 TV commercial (youtube.com)).

Cook can relate.

“We have jazz auditions in the middle of football season for all-region band,” he explained. “Our kids are working on that. We have a Veterans program we do during football season. You’re also talking about a band that plays sit-down concert music versus a band that plays pop tunes in the stands. They don’t mix. Some of your equipment’s not even right. You’ve got your marching gear out and you need concert gear.

“You’re trying to balance all these things. You’ve got march contest. You’ve got twirling contest. Right? You’ve got region band. You’ve got Christmas concert, Christmas parades. But you’re prepping for solo & ensemble contest before THAT’S even over. That’s in early February now. Our kids are getting their solo & ensembles before Christmas. It’s a mill. It’s just like a grinding mill. It never, ever stops.

“And finally, you get to June, and you’re like – I need a few weeks. I need to get in the pool and forget about this for a while. This is weird for me because I’m not planning the fall.”

Relationships with his students

Cook noted early-on in the interview that the length of tenure has had him see – well, some familiar faces.

“Have kids that come back,” he said. “You keep in contact. Some keep in contact better than others. I’ve been here so long that some of them, their kids have now entered the program and gone through. Second generation and even third generation has kind of started to come this way.”

And he admits that, from time to time, some of the pieces he put in front of his bands were challenging.

“The thing is with the kids – kids are forgiving,” he said. “They’re gonna rise to your expectations. So, you keep driving; you keep driving. As long as they respect you, as long they love you and you love them back, they’ll rise to your expectations. They always have. There’s times I get through, and I’m like, ‘My goodness, that was a marathon,’ a three-month marathon, to get them to contest.”

Cook had the honor to have one particular student as a band member: his son, Nicholas, now 25, who would become an all-state trombone player at Arp.

“My wife is an educator, also, at Bullard,” he explained. “(Nicholas) went to primary there. His beginner band was at Bullard. There was some coaching at home going on. But he asked me. I wasn’t going to move him. He said, ‘I’d like to come to Arp,’ and I said, ‘You’re gonna leave all your friends.’ But he said, ‘I know, but I’d like to be in your band.’”

“We transferred him over, and I was like, ‘man I hope we’re making the right decision,’ but it’s what he wanted, and now, I wouldn’t have had it any other way. You think, how are you gonna have your child in your program, because people might say, ‘you’re playing favorites, you’re playing favorites.’ But never had anything like that, no issues like that. It was amazing. I would have wanted him to be in my band if I had known it would be that way, so I’m glad he was here. It was important for us, and it was good to see him here. He’s a really fine trombone player. He really is.”

Looking back at it all

Is it really true that if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life?

Probably not, but…

“I was told as a young man that if you’re happy with your job 70 to 75 percent of the time, that you have a good job and you’re in the right place,” Cook said. “I can say it’s been higher than that for me. I’m at 80, 85 percent, probably. Age, and just getting tired, wears you down.”

And as he steps out, what would be Cook’s most-proud bullet point?

Well, Arp Tiger Pride, of course.

“I’m just proud of the culture that’s been built for band in Arp. Band’s a thing. It’s alive. It’s well. People want their kids in band. And that makes me proud, because I’m a part of that. I want their kids to be in band, and their kids to be in band. Because that’s how we continue to have great bands. And so Arp is a band community. And that makes me proud.”

One more question: what will you DO with your weekends this fall?

“I don’t know what I’m gonna do on Friday nights,” he laughed. “I’ll probably be at the game.”