When I was in high school I had a choir director named Robert Engle. He was one of the most influential persons in my life. Since that time I have spent innumerable hours singing in various groups, everything from chamber music to highbrow Mozart requiems to vocal jazz in front of hundreds in small group of six. As the language that intertwines all of humanity, music has been perhaps the greatest element in my personal spirituality as well. It has been an instrument of joyous celebration and healing salve.

Mr. Engle directed our high school groups and brought contemporary music and dance to the program. It turned the light on in hundreds of kid’s eyes. He got us to become cohesive units in small groups and large, performing music of the day. He turned us on. Not much older than his students, he was freshly out of college with a contagious enthusiasm that became the rudder in many young lives.

I found out that he passed away unexpectedly, his memorial service last Friday. The boulder of shock at his passing, thrown into the pool of our local Facebook page where ‘kids’ of the sixties and seventies reminisce, will no doubt have ripples extending throughout the states and internationally where those who were touched by his life, now reside.

Tonight I attended a free concert on the grass of a small park up on the peninsula where I went to High School. The performing group was a collection of four professional studio/backup musicians for famous bands of the sixties era. The warm still of a late August evening settled over the crowd of perhaps two hundred. Leaves in the trees shone with the last of the long slanted rays of sun. It was a perfect setting overlooking the still pacific.

When the band began to play the Temptations, “Get Ready”, a song that ranked as title of one of Mr. Engle’s seventies choral concerts, people rose to dance. And then, as if orchestrated on cue, a peacock took flight from the trees on one side of the park, lovely vibrant feather glinting. He landed gracefully in the pines on the opposite side of the grass — perfect synchronicity.  

Mr. Engle

How we loved you. How far reaching were your gifts. How meaningful one life can be. 

I never met a guy who makes me feel the way that you do
(It’s alright)
Whenever I’m asked who makes my dreams real 
I say that you do 
(you’re outta sight)
So fee fi fo fum
Look out baby ’cause here I come
So get ready ….

Thank you for reminding me of the preciousness and abundance of life, and music, sweet music. I am so very grateful.