One of FWCD’s Musical Greats: Bob Balch By Marsha Ghormley Rapfogel ’71
In September 1966, Fort Worth Country Day Headmaster Peter A. Schwartz asked Bob Balch to leave Kansas and come to Fort Worth to develop a music curriculum. Mr. Balch was charged with creating a program that was fun and inspiring at the same time. He taught two history classes and also started spring break trips to Washington, D.C., and skiing in Colorado.
The Art and Music departments shared a temporary building behind the Administration Building in the late ’60s. Lower School music met two times a week. On the Upper School level, Mr. Balch established the Glee Club, which sang in School and community events and nursing homes. At Christmas time, he and a couple of boys would load a piano in the back of a pick-up truck and the whole Glee Club would go caroling, followed by hot chocolate and cookies at the Schutts’ home. In those days Country Day had no “stage.” Glee Club performances took place at one end of the cafeteria (now the Sid W. Richardson Visual Arts Center) on a small raised platform. Gay Simmons Holsapple ’70 remembers standing next to Nancy Stuck ’70: “We were singing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone,’ and she and I cried through the whole thing! Sheesh!” Gay’s husband, Rex Holsapple ’70, was in a barbershop quartet with Mr. Balch, history teacher Howard Channell, and Steve Tatum ’72. Tatum remembers the quartet singing “Brighten the Corner Where You Are” during the summer in Tin Cup, Colorado. Martha Schutts Williams ’70 says: “He put me on the back row and asked me to just mouth the words!” Marsha Ghormley Rapfogel ’71 was recruited by Mr. Balch to be the Glee Club accompanist in grades 9-12. She credits Mr. Balch with inspiring her to become a music teacher. The Music Department mounted its first musical production, Bye Bye Birdie in the new Round Gym in 1970. Dialogue was coached by Tad Sanders. Students’ fathers pitched in to construct sets. Evelyn Siegel H’99 and her art students took care of set design. Quoting Mrs. Siegel from an interview in 1988: “Bob Balch had wonderful musicals in the gym and my art students designed and made all the scenery. Bye Bye Birdie and Oklahoma were not only visually smashing, they were musically great as well.”