featured STORY | Our Principal
MR. Rasler Celebrating 43 years at NHS by Rich Troyer
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n the spring of 1971, Gerald Rasler was ready to do his student teaching as a senior Music Education major at Ball State. His plan was to go to a rural high school in northern Indiana with a great music program so he could learn from the best. Unfortunately, his plans to go to Penn fell through and he ended up assigned to come to some school he’d never heard of: Northridge High School. 43 years later, ‘Ras’, as he is affectionately called, closes his time at Northridge. After student teaching at Northridge, Ras applied for the open choral director position at Northridge High School and Middlebury Junior High. In early August, as his wedding day approached and payments for the new car and new home loomed, he still hadn’t heard anything about the job. He summoned his courage, went to the administration building, and talked to the superintendent about the job. He left that day with the job he kept for the next 23 years.
Photo by Russ Draper Photo by Russ Draper
He inherited a program with four choirs: a concert choir (60 students), a women’s choir (25 students), a 7th grade, and an 8th grade choir (20 students each). He started each day at Northridge and drove to Middlebury Junior High for afternoon classes. Knowing he needed more people in choir, especially boys, he started playing basketball on the playground to get to know the boys and, eventually, they joined choir. Early in his first year, as auditions for Sands of Time (the original Northridge swing choir) approached, the Northridge principal told Ras not to “feel like we have to have a swing choir if not enough talented kids try out.” Ras asked him, “If we don’t have enough talented kids 12
InMiddlebury Magazine | JUNE 2014