Mr. Smith, also known as ‘Chief’, has temporarily returned from his retirement to cover for band director Mr. Orduz, who is currently on paternity leave. Chief worked for the Clinton school district for 36 years, serving multiple roles as the old band director, coordinating the concert band and creating elective classes like electronic music, beginning guitar, and rock band.
For some students, Chief is a brand-new face to them, and others, a familiar face, but that leaves the question, who is he, and why did he decide to come back?
Chief originally started during the 1987, 1988 school year as the band director at Morgan, brand new to teaching. At first, he started out as full time at the high school, but by year three or four, in the early 90s, they moved him to part-time with the high school and part-time at the old Pierson school. As he got more comfortable with teaching in the district, so did the students, with him as their teacher.
Soon enough, he would be given the nickname, Chief. Smith states that, “Chief is actually a very old nickname. I got it in either my first or second year teaching,” He goes onto lament that “it started out as a bunch of goof balls in concert band, my trombone players. That time during that year I had a beard, so they thought I looked like the guy on the Chef Boyardee can of Spaghettios Ravioli.” And so, they would start calling him “Chef”. Eventually the name went on to be misconstrued into a better fit: “I don’t know if I heard it right or someone else if I heard it wrong or someone else heard it wrong, or if they spelled it wrong, and somewhere, chef got turned into Chief,” recalled Smith.
As the years went by, what Chief taught evolved. “Over 36 years, I taught classes like music theory, history of rock and roll, jazz, and here at the new Morgan, we introduced rock band, electronic music, and beginning guitar.” As his teaching ability grew, it inspired him to want to expand what he could teach and help him connect with more students. “I really wanted to find some classes that did not require a prerequisite to try to get more kids and other than the concert band kids into music.” Chief has always strongly felt that there is so much to music, and so he has wanted to help students that may not know anything about music, and are interested, be involved.
When it came to why Chief wanted to retire, his answer was simple. “I got too old,” but, the reason of when he did is a little bit more complex. The big answer of when, was because of COVID. He originally planned on retiring around 2020, when it happened. “The 2 years of COVID took a real toll on music programs and in particular instrumental music programs.” Since there was no in school lessons and little real-life contact, it took a hard hit on a program that really needs in person teaching. It scared Chief that “there were kids in the senior class in this band that I met when they came up here, right after COVID, that like told me, Mr. Smith, I’m pleased to be here, but I haven’t played my instrument a year and a half.” So therefore, even if he was getting older, and wanting to retire, he would be more comfortable getting the entire band and music program though COVID. After he felt happy with it, he retired at the end of the 2023 school year.
During his retirement, Chief still worked and works for the school. “I still work here for the district, helping out with the technology in the auditorium. So I’ve kept that.” Chief helps run the school musicals for both Eliot and Morgan, and he also assists and maintains the technology in the auditorium, but other than working part time for the school, he still works at home. “January and February this year, I was renovating bedrooms and painting, so I was still working.”
The reason that Chief decided to come back was more than just a job offer. “[Mr. Orduz] asked politely. and I knew that he didn’t have a solid candidate that he felt comfortable with for multiple weeks.” In order for Mr. Orduz to have a reliable substitute, he would have to put a lot of work into interviewing someone for a job that only lasted a few weeks, which was difficult. Chief put it simply, “I was available. I was covering in the afternoons for Mrs. Nedderman and the [Eliot] musical, so the calendar lined up.” Conveniently, all of the classes that he had to teach, “already had material and were underway.”
In his head though, there was more to it than just being available for the job. “I had told after Mr. Orduz had kind of got his feet wet up here and so forth, and I kind of said, listen, in a couple of years, you know, you get stuck, you need a sub, something like that, cause in our business, we never get a real sub… ” A real struggle that Chief had in his years of teaching is that whenever he was sick, classes “would not happen, and there would be a study hall.” Since teaching music is a very particular expertise, it is hard to find proper coverage, especially during a time that Mr. Orduz has to be gone for multiple weeks.
Overall, students at Morgan are happily welcoming Chief. Junior Quintin Vece, a prior band student of his, and now current band and rock band student of his, exclaimed that: “Chief is awesome, he got band and rock band into good shape.” He enjoys the fact that Chief is “a lot of energy, and supportive to students.”
A student in rock band that has never had or met Chief before, freshman Rylen Robertson, was “really intimidated at first and was a bit scared but after meeting him, but after seeing Chief take over rock band, he’s actually really nice and a great band teacher, and I really do like him.” Rylen hopes that Chief can help him with his stage fright, as “stage fright is still a fairly big thing for me, so that could be something to ask him about to see if there was anything he could say about that.”
