High Notes 12-24-2014
Here’s is some sad news to
report: Tommy Dale, the 85-year old professional musician, born December
30, 1928 in Gallipolis, Ohio, and who played trombone with the Columbus Jazz
Orchestra, along with local saxophonist, Gary
Billups, in many local concerts in Oho and Tracy Park in the summertime,
died on Wednesday, December 10 in Columbus.
Tommy had played music professionally since the age of 16, and
eventually formed his own band, the Tommy Dale Orchestra as well as playing
with the Jerry Kaye Orchestra for many of the Broadway musicals and other music
events travelling to Ohio.
He also taught instrumental music
in the Columbus Public Schools from 1949 to 1979 and retired as band director
of Columbus North High School in 1979.
Mr. Billups, the semi-retired
Scioto County music teacher, and professional performing musician, reported
that a special Celebration of Life for Tommy will be held on Sunday, January 4,
2015 at 2:00 p.m. in the ballroom at the Aladdin Shrine Center, 3850 Stelzer
Rd., Columbus, Ohio, according to Mr. Billups, a long-time friend of Mr.
Dale. Interment took place at Sunset
Cemetery, Galloway, Ohio, with arrangements by SCHOEDINGER NORTHWEST CHAPEL.
An extensive obituary was
published in “The Columbus Dispatch” Dec. 13, 2014 edition.
Way back in the 1950’s in what I
call the Adolph Ruppazoic period of college basketball, I was able to listen to
Kentucky Wildcat basketball as Cawood Ledford, soothed me to sleep with his
wonderfully mellifluous, and indigenous-to-Kentucky, voice. The word “mellifluous” broken down is
interesting…mell in Latin means “honey”, and Ledford’s voice would flow like
newly collected honey on a hot Kentucky
afternoon. His tonetic regional dialect
was at once exciting, entertaining, and nearly hypnotic to an impressionable
teenage Ohioan who loved the game, and Wildcat basketball.
I grew up in Portsmouth, Ohio,
on the point where the Scioto
River pours into the
mighty Ohio River, and which historically the
Shawnee Indians lived and made forays into their Kentucky hunting grounds. In those 1790’s post-American Revolutionary
War days, the Indians were still using the shores of both states to maraud
against the thousands of pioneers who were floating down the mighty Ohio to settle.
Portsmouth, and for that matter, all of Ohio loves the game of
basketball, but nobody, anywhere in the entire U. S. A., can match the intensity
of the citizens of Kentucky, and the fondness for the U. K. Wildcats. Oh yes, I remember when one of Portsmouth
Ohio’s great basketballers, Mike Haley, after helping his 1961 high school win
the Ohio State Championship, attended Ohio University at Athens, and in the
mid-sixties played on a Bobcat team that upset the Kentucky Wildcats in the
NCAA tournament. I attributed that
victory to Haley as pay-back for the fact his Portsmouth Trojan team lost to
the Ashland, Kentucky Tomcats, in 1961. Ashland,
also won their state’s high school championship that year. And, the Cincinnati Bearcats, without Oscar
Robinson, defeated the Jerry Lucas, John Havilicek led Ohio State
team to win their first of two straight NCAA tournaments over the Buckeyes, in
1961 and 1962
The Buckeyes won the NCAA
tournament in 1960..
1961 is the year my brother, Sam,
got his metallurgical engineering degree from the University of Kentucky, at
Lexington and since that time, Sam has been a well known Wildcat fan, who now
boasts his own computer blog with a decided round-ball bent. If Ohio
has a more ardent Kentucky Wildcat basketball fan than Sam, I don’t know who it
could be. Of course, Jeanette
(Weddington) Sam’s wife, who has been with him since he met her at the Ohio
Theatre (late 1940’s) in New Boston, goes to the games, and is nearly as
passionate about Kentucky basketball as he.
I love Kentucky Basketball, but I
consider myself a true tri-state fan, because I follow the Cincinnati Bearcats,
the Marshall Thundering Herd, Miami
at Oxford, OU,
Xavier, OSU, Morehead, and West
Virginia too.
It is a great year to be a Buckeye and a Wildcat fan, they are both top
teams, and they both have great coaches.
Because of the early deadline for
the holiday newspapers over the next couple of weeks, I am writing this column early
so it can be submitted by Monday, December 22. It is Friday evening, and I am looking
forward to both the OSU, and North
Carolina, and Kentucky
and UCLA games Saturday, the 20th. I’ll
keep this paragraph in if they both win, which I do expect to happen.
Go Cats!
Go Bucks!
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