You don't always get to say that about people, and you certainly don't always gets to say that about teachers.

 

Teaching is hard - I know this, because I've done it, and if you don't love the act of teaching, it can grind you down, doing it day in and day out.

 

And then, of course, there's the adage that those you can't do, teach.

 

That wasn't the case with Stanley.

 

I feel strange calling him Stanley, because for four straight years he was Dr. Irwin to me.  To some, he was a voice teacher, but I knew him mostly through the choirs of DePauw University.

 

He was the conductor.

 

And he was good at it.

 

Trying to explain why he was good at it is tough if you never sat in front of him and watched him herd the cats that made up DePauw's largest choir.  A bunch of students, some faculty.  I think there might have even been a local citizen or two.  And there were more than 100 of us.

 

Describing it that way makes us sound like a rag-tag bunch who would be lucky to put together a semi-decent sound.

 

And yet, semester after semester, with only a couple of hours a week, Stanley pointed us all the same direction, said, "This way!" and we went there.  And we sounded good.  Good enough that a bunch of us sang on the main stage at Carnegie hall when I graduated, ten years ago.

 

It sounds a little like something out of the Bad News Bears, and maybe it was, a little.

 

But that wasn't what made Stanley great.  What made Stanley great was his voice.

 

It's hard to describe a voice in words.  But here's an attempt - think of a strong bass-baritone voice.  Get one in your mind.  Think of deep male voice you think of, when you think of opera.

 

Then add control.  Not the loud-singing-yowling sound you think of, when you think of opera.  But the kind of voice that could blow you to the back of a theater, pulled back to the softest whisper.  Think of it dripping with emotion.  Think of closing your eyes, and hearing someone sing, and letting the emotion of a voice pull you along without body language.

 

And that was Stanley.

 

I say that was Stanley, because Stanley passed away a few days ago.  Victim of a car accident.

 

To say he died too young doesn't even begin.

 

To say that the halls of DePauw University, where he taught, will feel the loss in the coming years, doesn't even begin.

 

To say that the world lost a good man doesn't even begin.

 

I said that Stanley Irwin was a nice guy, and that's true.  He was fun, and funny (Give Me a Wubble-You was a Stanley-ism, one that he used as he warmed us up - say it out loud and you'll smile), which is why when he said, "This way!" we followed him.  He knew when to push, and when not to push, and yet those are not the stories I want to tell.

 

Stanley Irwin was a nice guy to me, personally, and for that I want to take a minute to thank him.

 

The first time he was a nice guy to me, well, it was a strange little story.  I was taking a composition course, and twice a semester we had to convince someone to perform our work.

 

I learned quickly that the best way to get someone to play what you wrote is to get them involved in a process.  So I asked a buddy of mine to write me some silly Spanish lyrics (he had done a full four years of Spanish in high school) and then sing them.

 

So he wrote the lyrics to a little tune we called Juan's Gato.

 

I set the lyrics to music a few days later, and then gave the song back to my buddy - who took the song to Stanley Irwin.

 

Now, Stanley could have run the song once or twice with my friend, let him rehearse it a couple of times with the pianist, and forgotten about it.

 

But he didn't.  He took the silly lyrics, and the melody and chords I put together, and he treated them like they were any other art song.  And when my friend performed the song, it brought the house down.  The song worked because Stanley and my buddy took it just that seriously.

 

That isn't the end of the story.

 

The end of story comes in the middle of a random hallway of DePauw University.  I could make up a story about what I was doing, but it was probably just one of the many random comings and goings that happens in college - you go to one building, you go to class, you go to another.

 

And here came Stanley.

 

Stanley was a big guy, and hard to miss.

 

He stopped me in the hallway.  And he said, "I just wanted to tell you, I really like your song."

 

Here's a man who didn't have to take my song, or me, seriously.  He didn't have to stop me and tell me that he liked what I had done.  He wasn't grading me on my work, or offering suggestions, or doing anything else but, you know, being a man who had travelled the world over as a performer, saying he liked my work.

 

Like I said, a nice guy.

 

The other moment of his niceness was smaller, and it came at the end of my senior year.

 

DePauw had three major choirs, and while they all had names, the names aren't important.  Suffice to say, there was the huge choir, the choir a step down in size and the step up in talent... and the tiny choir, the one who was another step or two up on the talent scale.

 

College will play havoc with how you feel about your talent.  I was a good singer, probably the best at my high school, but most of the folks at DePauw blew me away.

 

And yet, my senior year, Stanley invited me to join that pinnacle of choirs.

I had to turn him down, sadly, because I was getting ready to start teaching and I knew I couldn't dedicate the time the choir would need of me.

 

I'm still not sure why he asked me to join.  Maybe he knew I would take it seriously.  Or maybe he really thought I had that kind of talent.

 

Or maybe he wanted to give me a chance to show what I could do.

 

Stanley did that for other people as well, but those stories are not mine to tell.  I told my stories.

 

Stanley sang his.

 

And now, the world is a little quieter, without his full voice ringing out in it.