- by his eldest son, G. Armour "Van" Van Horn
The leader of the band is gone
and his eyes have now been closed
But his blood runs through my instrument
And his song is in my soul
My life has been a poor attempt
to imitate the man
I am a living legacy
To the leader of the band
That's a close paraphrase of a 1981 song by Dan Fogelberg, a tribute to his father Larry. It came as a real shock the first time I heard it. I was driving home from visiting Jim in the psychiatric ward at Overlake Hospital. It was about the time the song came out, and possibly the first time I fully realized that my father was mortal and would someday leave me behind. I don't really remember how he ended up in that facility, but I remember clearly a conference with the doctors. Those things he said that made the staff think he was deluded were not only true but completely in character. You can't diagnose delusions of grandeur when the patient is actually a great man. Once we got him out of there, he was back to normal in short order.
The song stuck with me, and the more often I heard the lyrics, the more true they seemed. As Jim's health deteriorated these past few years, the words came back to me with growing clarity in two ways. The leader of the band was tired, his days were growing short. And more and more I saw the ways that I was a reflection - a legacy - of Jim Van Horn, the leader of the band.
We looked about as much alike as you can imagine. About thirty years ago I saw three photos in one frame, plus one more beside it, at my grandparent's house. All four images showed the face of a young man, the only difference was style: differences in glasses, clothing, hair, and photography. The three images were Jim, his father Joe, and Joe's father. The fourth image was my senior portrait.
When Jim met his future father-in-law, my maternal grandfather is reported to have said, "That is the only man I've ever known who could strut sitting down." This wasn't original, the comment had been made of William Jennings Bryan three or four decades before, but of course it has since been said of me.
Jim had a couple of traditional gigs after getting his Masters degree, teaching positions at Lutheran colleges in Minnesota. But that wasn't what he wanted for his life, so he packed up his wife and three kids in a Rambler station wagon and a U-Haul trailer and drove to Port Angeles where, for the princely sum of $2,500 per year, he would be allowed to conduct a small community orchestra. Some of my career moves have made just about as much sense.
Twenty-five-hundred bucks was worth a lot more in 1958 than it is today, but it still meant scrambling for loose change to support a household. So he conducted the choir at church, sold trailer parts to tourists in the summer, gave endless piano lessons, even tried to sell some real estate. I've not done any of those things, but like Jim, I've made choices that forced me to scramble all my life.
I'd like to think I've done some good things in my life, I can certainly point with pride to some projects I've done. Those don't come close to the pride I've felt for the people I've trained along the way. Jim was a teacher, it was a formal part of most of his work, and he displayed great pride in his students. I didn't train for it, but I turned out to be a teacher too.
Jim was alergic to eggs, deathly alergic. In restaurants he would hold dinner rolls up to the light to make sure they didn't have a bit of eggwhite glaze on the top. But in the early years in Port Angeles, he got up on Saturday mornings and made "Daddy fried eggs" for the three of us. Those seemed safe enough, but though I don't have the allergy, I've always treated any other eggs as poison myself.
Jim smoked, so I smoked. Jim drank scotch, so do I. We each married three times. He didn't like and never used his middle name, I strongly disliked my first name and legally dropped it.
There are many differences as well. Growing up in the '60s meant rebelling against your father, so I did. But even those parts of my life are largely based on life with Jim - some reflections, some reactions.
In that I am not alone. My brother and sister, of course, were shaped by Jim as well, in different ways. They, at least, followed his example and got college degrees. But with Jim you look to a wider group to see his legacy. There are hundreds of piano students, symphony members, symphony board members, vocalists in choirs, and even men and women who were once kids playing badminton in a drafty gym back in Port Angeles. He didn't accumulate power or wealth from his leadership and tutelage, but he won us over, and he changed us.
Lee Iacocca wrote, "My father always used to say that when you die, if you've got five real friends, then you've had a great life." Well, look around you now. It wasn't convenient for any of you to be here. There's no profit in coming here today. Jim wasn't a celebrity to arouse the curious, and your picture won't be on the news tonight because you made an appearance. We are friends of James Van Horn, and there are a lot more than five of us.
Of course, if Jim were here he could tell me how many came out today. He'd look out over the room, and he'd move his head around a little like he needed a different angle, and then his estimate of "the house" would be pretty darned close.
I have to come back to Dan Fogelberg's lyrics to close:
I thank you for the music
And the stories that you told
I thank you for the freedom
When it came my time to go
I thank you for the kindness
And the times when you got tough
And Daddy, I don't think I said
"I love you" near enough.
Return to Memorial Page