Page 4 — Thursday, June 24, 2021 — The Hastings Banner
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The Hastings Banner
Devoted to the interests of Barry County since 1856
Published by... Hastings Banner, Inc.
A Division of J-Ad Graphics Inc.
1351 N. M-43 Highway • Phone: (269) 945-9554 • Fax: (269) 945-
News and press releases: [email protected] • Advertising: [email protected]Subscription Rates: $52 per year in Barry County
$60 per year in adjoining counties
$65 per year elsewherePOSTMASTER: Send address changes to:
P.O. Box 188
Hastings, MI 49058-
Second Class Postage Paid
at Hastings, MI 49058- NEWSROOM •
Rebecca Pierce (Editor)
Kathy Maurer (Copy Editor)
Brett Bremer (Sports Editor)
- ADVERTISING DEPARTMENT •
Classified ads accepted Monday through Friday,
8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Frederic Jacobs
Publisher & CEOHank Schuuring
CFOScott Ommen
Mike GilmoreTy Greenfield
Jennie YonkerGreg Chandler Benjamin Simon
Taylor OwensSpencer White’s first job was in his dad’s
dentistry office. He sorted through papers,
mailed out statements and even served as his
dad’s dental assistant a few times when the
normal assistant was on vacation.
“[I don’t know] as much as I should, with
my dad being a dentist, but I guess I know a
little bit,” he said.
White didn’t pursue the family business.
Instead, he followed another path of his par-
ents’ – music.
From a young age, music surrounded
White’s life. His dad played saxophone in the
church orchestra. His grandmother played
the organ in church. His mom played the
piano.
White, who grew up in Grand Rapids, said
his parents wanted all five of their children to
attempt different activities –– to try music, to
try sports –– and see what stuck. For White,
music stuck. Third-grade piano lessons mor-
phed into a spot in the sixth-grade band
playing the clarinet.
“When I got into high school, I realized I
was just in love with it,” White said. “I loved
doing band.”
Nearly two decades later, White, 35, is still
involved in band. He serves as co-director of
bands for Hastings Area Schools and
Hastings Performing Arts Center site coordi-
nator, in addition to National FFA band
director. During the summer, he takes on the
role of Hastings City Band music director.
After graduating from Western Michigan
University in 2008, White took a job teach-
ing band in Edwardsburg, near the Indiana
border. He lived and worked in Edwardsburg
for four years, before losing the job due to
budget cuts.
“If I wasn’t laid off, I don’t think I would
have left Edwardsburg on my own and came
to Hastings because I was happy,” White
said. “I thought I had a nice job, and I did,
but I’m very fortunate that happened because
I’m very happy that I’m here.”
Almost instantly, he was impressed with
Hastings –– the downtown, the locally owned
restaurants, the plethora of nonprofits –– and
he has stayed.
“Hastings is a really unique community,”
he said.
In 2012, White became the band director
of the Hastings’ schools. In 2015, he also
took over as the city band director. The new
job required an adjustment. As band directorfor the schools, he has anywhere from five to
seven weeks to prepare for a concert, with
rehearsal almost every day of school.
But the city band is different. Musicians
have just two hours to rehearse 11 to 13
songs. They meet the night before the con-
cert, pick up the packet of music and practice
from 7 to 9 p.m. Once they’re finished, they
leave the music behind and return the next
night to perform. It took some learning and
strategy to put together concerts with such
little prep time.
“You make sure you program correctly,”
White said. “You don’t want to over-pro-
gram, like pick things that are too hard or too
challenging or out of reach.
“And then you want to make sure also that
it’s fun and enjoyable because this is a volun-
teer band. You want the audience and the
band members to be having a good time.”
The Hastings City Band features about 65
to 70 people, ranging from high school stu-
dents to White’s own father. A few years
after White took over the job as director, he
asked his dad to play with the band. His dad,
Dan, was reluctant at first. It had been 15
years. “I haven’t played my instrument in so
long,” he told his son. But White talked him
into joining.
“It’s just nice when you’re conducting and
you’re making eye contact all of a sudden, oh
yeah –– there’s Dad,” White said.For his work as the school and the Hastings
City Band director, Spencer White is this
week’s Banner bright light:
Average day : During the school year, 7
a.m. to 7 or 8 p.m. working. ... And then the
summertime, it’s much more casual. City
band is a great thing to do. That takes
Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I write a lot of
marching band shows for other schools. So, I
do that a lot during the summertime, and then
spend a lot of time with my family up in
Grand Rapids.
Music I listen to : All sorts. Of course, I
love listening to instrumental music, like jazz
and orchestra, pops and things like that. I
love Southern gospel music. My brother
Aaron helped me with a lot of projects last
summer, so he got me into grunge music,
which is like ‘90s stuff. I like classic rock.
When I tell Alexa to play something, it can
be one of those things.
Favorite movie : “Jurassic Park.”
First job : My first real job, that wasn’t
nepotism, was working for a greenhouse in
Grand Rapids.
Favorite TV program : “Survivor,” I’ve
watched every season.
Favorite teacher : Paul Boelkins. He was
Forest Hills Northern Middle School’s band
director, and now he teaches high school
band. and we’ve stayed friends through my
career.
Favorite vacation destination : Disney
World. I love going there.
When I was a kid : I wanted to be a pale-
ontologist because I loved dinosaurs.
If I won the lottery : I would buy a semi-
truck and fill it with band instruments and
just drive around to schools and let their
director take whatever they wanted out of
them.
Hobbies : I like cooking. I love to grill.
Meats, vegetables.
Go-to cooking meal : In the summertime,
kebabs.Each week, the Banner profiles a person
who makes the community shine. Do you
know someone who should be featured
because of volunteer work, fun-loving per-
sonality, for the stories he or she has to tell or
any other reason? Send information to
Newsroom, Hastings Banner, 1351 N. M-
Highway, Hastings, MI 49058; or
email [email protected].Spencer WhiteBus driver surprised,
celebrated
Banner June 28, 1972
Families along Chip St. Martin’s school bus route
gathered for a surprise potluck dinner the evening of
June 21. “Welcome Chip” and “We love you Chip” signs
greeted the Hastings school bus driver at the home of
Eldon Roush on Roush Road. The affair was a complete
surprise to the guest of honor, and it took some careful
planning and the cooperation of both Mrs. [Irene] St.
Martin and their son, Mitch, to get Chip to the party. “A
few fibs were necessary,” and to say he was surprised
was putting it mildly. From the minute he arrived, he was
surrounded by the children ... The kids could hardly wait
to show him the large decorated cake – a big yellow bus,
naturally – and the proclamation declaring ‘Chip St.
Martin to be the Best Bus Driver Ever,’ signed by
everyone present. ... Almost every family in attendance
expressed their thanks to Chip for some special act of
kindness shown to them and for his understanding and
patience with his young bus passengers. Pictured (from
left) are Lonnie Payne, Star Boze, Cheri Fox, St. Martin,
Darin Roush, Scott Payne, Kimmy Cairns, Bryan
Cheeseman and Mark Fox.Renewing our
celebration of July 4
We’re still 10 days away from the biggest
firecracker holiday of the year and already
the heat is building. And it’s not the kind of
heat America is used to on July 4.
This year feels different because, although
we’ll still be celebrating amid parades and
picnics, the flags and fireworks, some
Americans aren’t dealing well with the
impact of the global pandemic and the
uneasiness created by political and social
unrest.
More people today are questioning if the
holiday, also known as Independence Day,
is really saluting our democracy and if the
country is doing its best to try and live up to
its promise of freedom, liberty and justice
for all.
We celebrate July 4th because it’s the day
we adopted the Declaration of Independence,
a document that provided a young nation the
moral compass of ensuring human equality.
That’s the foundation that was built for us
245 years ago and the standard by which we
judge ourselves today.
In 1776, our Founding Fathers made a
pledge that has united us all for one day
each year. That pledge was “America.”
Today, political factions are promoting
their narrow perspectives of what they think
America should be. This is nothing new.
History shows that this has always been the
case. There will always be factions who are
free to disagree.
But, according to a recent poll, 62 percent
of Americans feel the country is deeply
divided over how to handle the coronavirus
and how to deal with protests in cities across
the country.
“I don’t feel independent from the oppres-
sors of the past,” one respondent said.
“Someday I hope we can live up to our
national values.”
That’s a telling observation – and one that
raises a question: How can we lift ourselves
above the problems of the past?
“If there is a single issue that drives the
world today, it is independence,” President
John F. Kennedy said during a presentation
at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall July 4,- “The theory of independence is as old
as man himself, and it was not invented in
this hall. But it was in this hall that the the-
ory became a practice; that the word went
out to all, in Thomas Jefferson’s phrase, that
‘the God who gave us life gave us liberty at
the same time.’”
In that speech of nearly 60 years ago,
Kennedy praised the American democratic
system, a system that encourages differenc-
es and allows for dissent. He reminded us,
though, of the enduring relevance that the
Constitution and the Declaration of
Independence hold for all of us – no matter
on which side we stand in today’s rancorous
debates.
That’s where independence becomes
problematic because it requires acceptance
of other views. That’s why we see so much
discord today. When people focus only on
the Declaration of Independence’s call for
an individual’s rights to “life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness,” they often forget their
own responsibility to ensure that everyone
else gets the same chance.
“Acting on our own, by ourselves, we
cannot establish justice throughout the
world,” Kennedy warned. “We cannot
insure its domestic tranquility, or provide
for its common defense, or promote its gen-
eral welfare, or secure the blessing of liberty
to ourselves and our posterity.”
Another former president, Ronald
Reagan, during a July 4 celebration in 1986,
also referenced the Constitution and the
Declaration of Independence and the
responsibilities in pursuing life, liberty and
happiness. Reagan reminded everyone in
his speech that 56 men gathered in 1776 at
Independence Hall to hammer out an agree-
ment that could stand the test of time.
Their courage, Reagan said, created a
nation built on a universal claim to human
dignity and the proposition that every man,
woman and child has a right to a future of
freedom.
But Reagan’s message came with a warn-
ing.
“The real obstacle of moving forward the
boundaries of freedom, the only danger to
the hope of America comes from within,”
said Reagan, who marveled at how our
Founding Fathers were able to sit down in
Philadelphia and hammer out a document
for independence that still guides us today.
But here we are, 245 years after the birth
of a nation, and the gravest threat we may
ever have faced is the inability of our two
political parties to deal with some of the real
issues this country faces. Due to party poli-
tics, the focus now is more about winning
and losing rather than what’s in the best
interest of Americans.
“Freedom is never more than one genera-
tion away from extinction,” Reagan said.
“We didn’t pass it to our children in the
bloodstream, it must be fought for, protect-
ed and handed on for them to do the same.”
Yet today we face the threat of division
from factions that look for ways – and
sometimes stumble into ways – to divide us.
Rather than admitting that America’s his-
tory is filled with mistakes and missteps,
these factions seem strangers to the concept
that America still remains the best form of
government known to man. We must find
ways to move forward from that past, with
all its faults and flaws, to work our way to a
better future for all.
But President Joe Biden slipped into that
“oppressors of the past” history during his
June 1 speech in Tulsa, Okla., which marked
the 100th anniversary of the massacre of
hundreds of Black people by an angry white
mob. “I call on the American people to
reflect on the deep roots of racial terror in
our nation and recommit to the work of
rooting out systemic racism across our
country,” said the president who pledged to
be a unifier.
I believe this is the kind of discourse that
will continue to divide us, making resolu-
tion of problems unlikely. We’re a nation of
diversity, and we should celebrate that fact
by working together to resolve the issues
that divide us. But that takes real leadership
to rise above the sins of the past, something
that’s hard to find today in the halls of
Washington.
“America will never be destroyed from
the outside,” said President Abraham
Lincoln. “If we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
We need to acknowledge the horror of
that history and move on. Let’s focus on
what we can do to create better tomorrows
rather than concentrating on wrongful pasts,
looking for issues with which to condemn
America today.
Our nation was established on the ideals
of freedom and self-determination that
Americans have always been willing to pro-
tect and fight for with their lives. Yes,
there’s a lot to be found that’s wrong with
America; and those ills run the gamut.
But the Fourth of July was set aside to
celebrate with those around us all the things
that are right with America.
That’s why so many of us relate to the
words of songwriter Lee Greenwood: “And
I’m proud to be an American, where at least
I know I’m free. And I won’t forget the men
who died, who gave that right to me, so I
stand up next to you and defend her still
today, ‘cause there ain’t no doubt I love this
land – God Bless the USA.”
That’s the kind of message we need from
our leaders, words that help us move beyond
our differences to solve these issues that
divide us.
That’s why this Fourth of July must be a
renewal of our commitment to a document
gifted to us 245 years ago and that, even
now, still stands the test of time.Fred Jacobs, CEO,
J-Ad Graphics Inc.Footloose and fancy free
The sign says it all: No diving. No swimming under dock. No swimming in boat
docking area. No running. No glass bottles. But it doesn’t say: No shoes.