THE MUSIC PLAYED ON FROM MILWAUKEE TO VIETNAM TO CEDAR COMMUNITY Jim Lorch, Cedar Community independent living resident, picked up the clarinet at age seven and was able to play by ear— he could listen to a song, then play it back without missing a beat. Jim began taking formal lessons at the age of eight, and he later joined the band of the Milwaukee Public Shools Biennual Music Festival in 1965 as a third clarinet. In 1967, he was asked by the band director if he could play an E-flat clarinet. “It’s a clarinet, isn’t it?” was Jim’s response. He was the only E-flat clarinet player in the city of Milwaukee to make the all-city band in 1967, and again in 1969. Jim decided not to pursue a music degree after high school. “Music is what got me through high school. I didn’t have a real high self-esteem,” says Jim. “I was a second-chair clarinet, and there was always someone ahead of me. I wasn’t comfortable challenging anybody.” While in high school, Jim also knew he didn’t want to be drafted into the military. He wanted to make the choice himself and he wanted to be a Marine, similar to his father, who was a Merchant Marine. He enlisted 120 days before his high school graduation. After graduation, he went to boot camp at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego, Calif. “We were known as the Hollywood Marines—sunglasses and suntan lotion,” laughs Jim. During basic training, the drill instructor asked if anyone played a musical instrument. Jim said yes, and after trying out, he made the Marine Corps Base Band playing clarinet. The primary duty of a bandsman, as Jim was told, was to guard the general and pick up the deceased. He also mentioned that in any branch of the military, you are a rifleman first, and your military occupational status is secondary. He was stationed in San Diego for almost a year, playing at boot camp graduations, parades, and concerts at local schools. Jim was then deployed to Vietnam. During the day the band members would dress in their starched jungle uniforms and play at different sites. At night, they would “eat chow” as Jim calls it, and then put on their unstarched uniforms and head out on listening patrol to a nearby mountain ridge. For 12 hours at a time they were not allowed to speak, just listen. Jim returned home from Vietnam after 11 months of duty, and married his sweetheart, Mary. Once he was back in Milwaukee, his brothers, who played trumpet and trombone in a band, asked Jim to join the group. Jim and his brothers played at the Bavarian Inn in Milwaukee. After one of their shows, he was approached by a professor from the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music who said he had never heard a clarinet played the way that Jim played the instrument—with such feeling. The professor was starting a jazz band and wanted Jim to join the group.
Jim is proud to have received a Quilt of Valor from a couple at a Madison quilt show. Quilts of Valor Foundation is a national organization with volunteers who create quilts as a way to thank those who served, and to honor their service and sacrifice. For more information, visit qovf.org.
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| AUTUMN 2019
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