A Hidden Academic Gem Continued

Chapter 2: The Orchestra From Scratch

by: Sanneke Taylor

In 1999, Keith Bradshaw was the first and only full-time faculty member teaching music. He was essentially a one-person department, with some help from his wife, who was a pianist. However, Bradshaw found himself overwhelmed with the workload. He directed the chamber choir, taught all the theory courses, and led all aspects of music at the university.

At the time, there weren’t enough faculty in either the music or theater departments to offer both majors, so Southern Virginia College offered the Performing Arts major. In this major, acting students were required to take music theory classes, and music students took acting classes. With such limited resources, that was the only way to offer both majors to students.

Yet, SVC still wanted to add a music-only major. In the spring of 1999, Keith Bradshaw called an old friend, Mark Taylor.

Dr. Taylor and his family lived in Idaho Falls, where he had a job leading a grade school orchestra. The phone call came out of the blue, and he was surprised to learn that Bradshaw was now teaching at a school in Virginia. Dr. Taylor recalls that Bradshaw told him how busy he was and said, “‘I’m dying. I need some help.’” But when he asked if there were any jobs available, Bradshaw responded that there were not, nor was he sure when one would be available. Mark’s wife, Samee, requested some literature to learn more about SVC and Mark asked Keith to keep them in mind if something did open up later.

One of the brochures they received had a beautiful picture of Main Hall lit up at night. Samee Taylor recalls feeling that they would one day end up there: “I put [the picture] on the wall, so it was the first thing I saw in the morning and the last thing I saw before I went to sleep at night.”

Dr. Taylor didn’t have the same impression at first but later felt a spiritual prompting that their family’s time in Idaho Falls was soon coming to an end. He decided not to renew his contract at the school where he was currently teaching, much to his supervisor’s dismay. They tried to convince him to stay, pointing out that he didn’t have another job offer. But Taylor stood by his decision.

The Taylors looked for another job, but none seemed quite right. It had been more than a year since they received the call from Keith Bradshaw, so working at SVC didn’t seem like it was in the cards.

At the end of April 2000, Bradshaw surprised them with another call. Dr. Taylor recalls Keith saying, “I don’t know what’s going on, but John Peterson [the SVC provost] wants to meet with you tomorrow.” Their family had already planned a family picnic but were able to arrange to meet Peterson after the outing.

The next day they drove to Idaho’s gorgeous Palisades and had a pleasant family outing with all eight of their children. They visited their favorite novelty ice cream store for the famous “square ice cream,” then piled back into the van to be home in time for the meeting. The van wouldn’t start. With only two hours to make it back, they found that the van was completely undrivable and would need to be towed.

They were fortunate to find a tow truck that was able to help them—the one that came was going to call it a day but graciously agreed to pick them up. Another stroke of fortune—or, as they would call it, a little miracle—came when somebody they knew found them in their predicament and offered to drive Samee and the kids home.

Samee arrived about half an hour before Peterson was supposed to show. Mark got back later with the tow truck, with only minutes to spare. He had just enough time to wash the grease off his hands and change his clothes.

John Peterson showed up about 10 minutes late, and when they answered the door, they were surprised to find him holding his pants shut, which were slit on one side from ankle to hip. He said, “I apologize for my appearance,” and asked, “by any chance, do you have any safety pins?”

As Peterson was making his way to the Taylor residence in his daughter’s car, he discovered that she hadn’t maintained the radiator fluid levels–it was nearly empty. He pulled over on the side of the highway and crossed a barbed-wire fence to get some water from the ditch but snagged his pants on the way back, tearing them completely.

After he excused himself to the bathroom to pin his pants back together and reappeared in a more presentable state, he said, “I don’t know what’s going on here. Either this is just not the right thing, or Satan really does not want this to happen.” They laughed, bonded over their shared misfortune, and after half an hour, he offered Mark a job starting the fall 2000 semester. Mark and Samee felt right about it and accepted it immediately.

When Peterson returned to SVC, he told the president of the university, President Fosson, that he had offered the job. Fosson’s responded, “You can’t give them the job. We don’t have the money.”

Peterson, however, explained that he felt this hiring was supposed to happen. Fosson trusted his decision and said they would find a way to make it work.

The Taylors packed up their home and moved across the country, excited about what lay ahead. They arrived in Buena Vista very late one night, and the next day a family from the SVC community invited them to dinner. Other school families brought over sleeping bags and things for the kids to sleep on since their moving truck wasn’t scheduled to arrive for another few days. That week President Fosson gave the whole family a tour of the campus.

The Taylors immediately felt at home.

Looking back on their experience, the Taylors felt that a series of miracles had brought them to Buena Vista and SVC. They were surprised to find that many of their new colleagues had similar and unexpected experiences bringing them to work at the college. Samee described a feeling of, “How in the world did we end up here?” Always combined with the sense that they were undoubtedly in the right place.

Video: https://youtu.be/XGltSfXSW1E

In his first semester, Dr. Taylor was tasked with assisting Professor Bradshaw with his tremendous workload, including teaching the first two theory courses and some conducting courses and teaching the violin and viola students. Most notably, he was instructed to start an orchestra.

Dr. Taylor recalls that there was some risk involved in working for SVC. The school was still very young and unaccredited. Students who came didn’t know how easily their credits would transfer or if their degree would be recognized by future employers or grad schools, so growth was uncertain. But part of the appeal of his job was the challenge of building the orchestra from scratch.

During his first semester, they had twelve players in the strings-only orchestra, including spouses of other faculty members who agreed to join. Dr. Taylor didn’t even conduct the first concert because they needed a viola player, and he was the only one who could do it.

Building the orchestra was no small assignment, with the meager amount the school was able to spend on the program. Taylor was granted a modest amount of money to purchase some music but little else. The lack of resources meant that they had to get creative. At times they borrowed music from neighboring Washington & Lee University and, on one occasion, a couple of timpani from Parry McCluer High School. Samee recalls that despite–and perhaps because of–the challenge and creativity required in those first few years, things went unexpectedly well.

Dr. Taylor describes his first years as “flying by the seat of my pants,” but that it was also exciting.

“There was just this hustle and bustle. I remember… the first president during my time here talking about making sure every student had a bed to sleep in. I mean, it was really scrambling to make sure that they could take care of the basic resources to have a residential college. And again, there was something very exciting about that.”

“I felt like the faculty and staff were really pulling in the same direction; everyone just united in a cause.”

Dr. Taylor wasn’t the only one with limited resources, and the collective challenge put all the faculty and administration on the same team.

“I remember the piano professor teaching students in the ballroom, but keeping in mind that on one side of the ballroom is the president’s office, and the main entrance to the cafeteria—in fact, the only entrance to the cafeteria—was through the ballroom…and so it took a special brand of patience.”

The best piano was in the ballroom, so despite not having an ideal space, they made it work to provide the kind of education their students were seeking.

There wasn’t one department that was dramatically larger than the others, and the Taylors recall that there wasn’t competition between departments as sometimes happens at universities. Everyone who worked for the school gave where they could. Samee Taylor described, “It was like you just serve where you can and do what you can…it really became a family, you know. Everybody contributed.”

“The track coach was in plays, it was those things where everyone would contribute concessions so that they can make some money, or do concessions or do the ticket office, everybody just you know, ‘You need help with your program? Of course we’ll help you.’”

That closeness extended well beyond their work at the university. Samee recalls that “we used to joke in the early years that the next building project needed to be a faculty trailer park for us to live in because we all lived in dives—old housing.”

Samee added with a laugh, “And the next person they needed to hire was a mechanic to fix all of our broken-down cars. We would just give each other cars and loan each other vehicles – because somebody always was broken-down. That was just standard procedure. It was actually quite embarrassing. But … we looked out for each other, and it was a very tight community.”

Because of the financial challenge of being a start-up school, SVC couldn’t offer high salaries. Yet, the faculty chose to work there because of the environment and opportunity. Being part of the building of the school was very real—the administration was extremely open about the school’s progress and challenges. It actively worked with its faculty and staff to collaborate on solutions. It didn’t feel like a top-down organization. It felt like a real community.

That feeling of unity extended to students as well. The university didn’t have the funds to arrange a shuttle from the Roanoke airport for students who didn’t have a vehicle, but it was still a priority to help them feel welcomed. President Fosson was known personally to pick up students when necessary.

Samee recalls that every Thanksgiving, faculty members would ask students if they had a place to celebrate. If they didn’t, they would often invite them into their own home to enjoy the holiday with their family. “There were times when we had the whole orchestra to our house for dinner and games.”

A combination of the one-on-one time with the professors and the high academic expectations made the education exceptional. As Dr. Taylor describes it, there was no apology for the rigor of SVC academics. “It was part of the student handbook: coming to class, doing so on time, participating actively.”

However, students who were facing difficulties were not left behind. One semester Samee took a course in Italian, and on an important quiz day, one of the students was absent. The professor tried to call him, didn’t get an answer, and asked the class if anyone knew where he was. One student suggested he might still be in his dorm room, so the professor left the class to their studies and went to find the missing student.

Samee recalls, “Troubled students quite often would end up home for dinner at our house.” Most of the students were sacrificing to come to SVU—it was a small, unaccredited school in small-town Virginia. The professors were also sacrificing to be there and wanted to do their best, give their best, and build something of worth. She believed that the sacrifice and mutual effort from students and professors made it a wonderful if challenging, environment.

She also said it was wonderful, “knowing—everybody knew,” that somebody had your back. That everybody cared about what was happening and had a vision for what it could and should be. And that is what you felt like, and you felt like you were part of something important and exciting.”

More than twenty years later, the music department at Southern Virginia University is thriving, among the largest at the school. The program has expanded to include instrumentalists of all kinds. It provides abundant opportunities for music majors – the dream that Dr. Taylor and his colleagues worked so hard to realize.

Sanneke Taylor is a young writer and graduate of Southern Virginia University. She loves to explore and write on a wide variety of topics from current events to health to local histories. Follow her on Instagram (@sanneke.taylor.writing) to see more of her work.