Now Nick has sold all of his stores and the business and he and Lisa have moved north.
We will tell this part of Nick's story in his own words."Fast forward to today, I’ve sold the business, I turned seventy earlier this year, and I’ve had the unbelievably great fortune to be able to serve the musical community of Santa Barbara and beyond for forty-seven years. And it all started with my parents saying “yes”.
Meredith Sedgwick’s oldest son, Daniel Sedgwick, is the band director at my old high school in Crescent City. Now in his thirteenth year, he has taken the vibrant program he inherited to even greater heights. As an interesting aside, there is only one band director between Dan and my band director, and by the time Dan retires, the three of them will have taught at the high school for close to a century. Longevity like this is unheard of, a solid testament to the abilities of these three educators.
Dan, his sister Grace and brother David all grew up in my store, taking lessons every Saturday (clarinet, clarinet and trumpet, respectively). I’ve stayed in touch with Dan, and for the past ten years I’ve corralled a couple of my high school buddies to join me to march in the 4th of July parade with the high school marching band in Crescent City. It’s a fabulous, old-timey, Americana on display parade, and we have a blast.
Now to review. The county where I grew up has a strong music program, great kids (because kids are great everywhere), and no money. The teachers buy old instruments on eBay out of their own pockets and fix them up as best they can. Just think of what they could do for the kids and performing arts in public education if they had better funding, as most every other county in the state does.
Following a career which graciously allowed my wife and I to do a lot of outreach in Santa Barbara, we are now turning our focus to Crescent City. We decided in late 2018 that we would donate the entire proceeds from the sale of our six stores when the company sold to supporting the performing arts in public education in Crescent City and Del Norte County as a whole. We did exactly that in September of 2019 and immediately got right to work.
To date we have donated 100 brand new band instruments to the district, some for every school, from flutes all the way up to marimbas. Dan Sedgwick spent several summers during his college years working in our repair shop in Santa Barbara, and knowing that the nearest proper repair facility for his district was hours away, we bought a full repair shop which is now set up adjacent to the band room. Dan petitioned for and was given the okay to teach a class in band instrument repair, and I’m positive this will lead to successful careers in the field for many of his students. Most recently we overhauled the stage lighting in the auditorium at the junior high, bringing it up to state of the art from a system that dated back to 1929, which had patches upon patches upon patches to make it just function abysmally.
Our big project will be to build a center for the performing arts on the high school campus. The auditorium at the junior high is the largest venue in the county at present, and the high school band won’t even fit on it. The sale of Nick Rail Music will unfortunately not be enough to fund this in its entirety, but there’s enough to get the ball rolling. We’re working with the school board, the county office of education, the mayor, the city manager, et cetera and everyone ‘s committed, invested and excited, but it’s mostly up to Lisa and myself to find the money.
It’s a challenging new adventure, as we learn about memorandums of understanding, feasibility studies, capital campaigns, foundations, grants and so much more. But at the end of each day, we remind ourselves that this is for the youth, present and future, and for the community that gave me my start.
And to do this, and do it well, we need to be there. Please wish us well in our endeavor, what we consider our final chapter in a wonderful life, and I promise we’ll be down to visit from time to time! "