Nick wrote a letter to the PTB that described his early life in loving detail. Nick is the rare person who writes and speaks identically so we've reproduced a portion of his letter here.
I was born in LA, but shortly before I turned seven our family moved north, exchanging the hustle and bustle of LA for a very rural setting in Del Norte County; right on the coast at the Oregon border. We had a house on the Smith River with Redwood trees in the back yard, an abundance of salmon and trout, with all of the outdoors at our fingertips in a county which at the time had fewer 10,000 people.
As idyllic as all this sounds, we grew up poor, and to this day the county remains one of the most impoverished counties in the state. Fortunately, my older brother Paul (who works at Chaucer’s Bookstore) and I had parents who loved us, raised us well despite the many challenges we all faced, and I remain grateful for the great childhood I had.
When I turned nine, our K-8 elementary school chose to offer school band for the first time. The school held an assembly to introduce the instruments (just like the Music Van!) and I was immediately drawn to the cornet. The hitch was my parents would have to buy an instrument for me, so when I asked them if I could join the band I was already prepared for a “no”. Yet, to my great surprise, they said “yes”, and to this day I’m not sure how they were able to afford the cornet. My mother kept very busy at home, doing all the cooking, laundry, cleaning up after my brother and myself, sewing and mending, baking bread, planting a garden, anything and everything to stretch the $1.25 an hour my father made working in a plywood mill.
You can guess what came next. I loved band, I loved my band mates and by the time I got to high school I spent every minute I could in the band room. I switched to trumpet, added tenor sax, noodled around with bassoon and flute and began what would become a lifetime of interest in how instruments work and how to repair them.
When I graduated I knew I wanted to be a band director, and off I went to UC Berkeley, scholarships in hand. This is the point in time when the big frog from a very, very small pond realized he was, in reality, indeed perhaps the smallest tadpole in the world’s largest ocean. I lost direction, dropped out for a while to catch my breath, returning after a year off to continue my studies at UC Santa Barbara.
After two and a half years with my nose to the grindstone, I made a decision. I knew I could get the degree, I knew I could get the teaching credential, and I knew I could get a job as a band director. However, I felt that it would take years for me to rise to the level where I could give my students the level of education that I had received growing up. That was unacceptable, so once again, I quit school.
I was born in LA, but shortly before I turned seven our family moved north, exchanging the hustle and bustle of LA for a very rural setting in Del Norte County; right on the coast at the Oregon border. We had a house on the Smith River with Redwood trees in the back yard, an abundance of salmon and trout, with all of the outdoors at our fingertips in a county which at the time had fewer 10,000 people.
As idyllic as all this sounds, we grew up poor, and to this day the county remains one of the most impoverished counties in the state. Fortunately, my older brother Paul (who works at Chaucer’s Bookstore) and I had parents who loved us, raised us well despite the many challenges we all faced, and I remain grateful for the great childhood I had.
When I turned nine, our K-8 elementary school chose to offer school band for the first time. The school held an assembly to introduce the instruments (just like the Music Van!) and I was immediately drawn to the cornet. The hitch was my parents would have to buy an instrument for me, so when I asked them if I could join the band I was already prepared for a “no”. Yet, to my great surprise, they said “yes”, and to this day I’m not sure how they were able to afford the cornet. My mother kept very busy at home, doing all the cooking, laundry, cleaning up after my brother and myself, sewing and mending, baking bread, planting a garden, anything and everything to stretch the $1.25 an hour my father made working in a plywood mill.
You can guess what came next. I loved band, I loved my band mates and by the time I got to high school I spent every minute I could in the band room. I switched to trumpet, added tenor sax, noodled around with bassoon and flute and began what would become a lifetime of interest in how instruments work and how to repair them.
When I graduated I knew I wanted to be a band director, and off I went to UC Berkeley, scholarships in hand. This is the point in time when the big frog from a very, very small pond realized he was, in reality, indeed perhaps the smallest tadpole in the world’s largest ocean. I lost direction, dropped out for a while to catch my breath, returning after a year off to continue my studies at UC Santa Barbara.
After two and a half years with my nose to the grindstone, I made a decision. I knew I could get the degree, I knew I could get the teaching credential, and I knew I could get a job as a band director. However, I felt that it would take years for me to rise to the level where I could give my students the level of education that I had received growing up. That was unacceptable, so once again, I quit school.