After more than 60 years playing, teaching and directing music in the Mansfield area, it’s hard for 86-year-old Percy Hall to imagine doing anything else. And yet, it’s a career he never envisioned as a kid taking piano, violin and trumpet lessons with his two brothers.
“I never had any thought growing up of being a school music teacher,” said Hall. “I grew up in Maryland near Washington, D.C., and at that time there was no music in my school – no choir, band or orchestra. But my parents gave me and my two brothers piano lessons and I took violin lessons and trumpet a little later, not knowing it was possible that there was such a thing as a school band.”
In fact, it was while serving in the Army after the end of World War II that the idea of teaching music crept into Hall’s head.
“Some of the guys in the Army band were going to go back and become school band directors and I thought, that sounds like a good idea, I wonder if I could do it,” he remembered.
So after getting out of the Army, Hall earned his Bachelor’s degree in Music at Westminster College in Pennsylvania and then his Masters degree at the University of Michigan. But the music education wasn’t the most valuable thing Hall took from his time at Westminster.
“That’s where we met, so that’s the best thing I got out of my college education,” says Hall, referring to his wife of more than 60 years, Nancy. He pauses and asks, “Did you hear me?”
“I heard you,” says Nancy Hall with a laugh.
These days the couple spends their time at their Mansfield home as Percy Hall adjusts to retirement, which hasn’t been easy. He still directs, leading the church choir at Linden Road Presbyterian Church where Nancy Hall has been the organist for 62 years. However, even enlarging the sheet music on an 11×17 sheet of paper has not helped against the challenge of Percy Hall’s fading vision, not to mention his fading hearing.
“I never retired until I quit conducting the Mansfield Symphony Youth Strings (in 2013), and that was because I can’t see well enough to do the things you have to do, to do the things I want to do,” said Percy Hall. “That’s a difficulty to face. Thank heaven for this young lady over here,” he gestures to his wife.
“What are the things a musician needs? To be able to see and to hear,” said Nancy Hall. “And what are the two things that are going? Life isn’t fair.”
Still, Percy Hall is still able to find joy in the same thing that motivated him to take his first job at Madison High School in 1952: his students. He said sometimes he’ll be walking down the aisle at the grocery store and will hear the familiar “Mr. Hall!” greeting. It might take a moment to jog his memory, but Hall says once he knows a student’s name he can remember what instrument they played.
“One young man maybe a year or two ago said, ‘Mr. Hall, you probably don’t want to remember me, I was pretty poorly behaved in school but I want you to know I got an awful lot out of what you taught us in band,’” remembered Hall. “He told me it all wasn’t in vain.”
One man who appreciates Percy Hall’s memory for his students is Earl Hart, a 1960 graduate Mansfield Senior High School who was part of Percy Hall’s first band class when he started at Mansfield Senior in 1958.
“I was a junior and a Band Manger in 1958 when Mr. Hall started at Mansfield Senior High School,” said Hart. “Even though I didn’t play a musical instrument Mr. Hall always treated me like I was a First Chair in one of the sections of the band. I don’t remember him every treating any student otherwise; he is truly loved by all of his students.”
In 1965, five years after graduation, Hart was applying to enter the Radiology Technology program at Mansfield General Hospital and needed a letter from one of his teachers.
“I went to see Mr. Hall worried he wouldn’t remember me after such a long time,” said Hart. “He not only remembered me, but took the time to write the letter that was instrumental in my being accepted into the school. That led to my career for 40 years.”
Percy Hall’s students span from those at Mansfield Senior High School from 1958 until he retired in 1993, to those at Ashland University where he taught instrumental techniques part-time to Music Education majors for 10 more years after his “retirement” from Mansfield. Hall’s reach spans to students he directed in the Mansfield Symphony Youth Strings, where he started in 2001 until his last concert on March 17, 2013.
“Mr. Hall is sincerely the most precious, loving, and helpful man I’ve ever met,” said Paige Gutai, a sophomore at Mansfield Senior High and a member of the Mansfield Symphony Youth Strings. “He still comes into Senior High to help us with the Senior High and Junior High solo and ensemble, which is a big help to our string department. He is super sweet and will help out in any way he can.”
Interacting with students is what Percy Hall misses most about teaching, particularly in small ensembles. It was the smaller ensembles that inspired Hall to start creating his own arrangements after he was not satisfied with the quality of music that was available at the time.
“I got especially interested in arranging and composing but mostly arranging pieces for the level that youth strings could play so they could play music by well-known famous composers but the hardest parts taken out and revised,” said Hall. “It went over well, so they’re sold all over the country.”
More than 250 pieces have been published to Hall’s credit, with more than 200 of his ensembles listed on the current edition of the OMEA Solo and Ensemble Adjudicated Event Music. Hall’s arrangements and compositions are also widely performed in junior high and middle school adjudicated events.
“I always got a great deal of satisfaction out of not only just the things that I wrote and arranged, but to get students to perform, especially in small groups,” said Hall. “As a teacher you have to know the difficulty of music that they would be capable of doing well when they work hard at it. Teachers have a wonderful opportunity to change the world. I don’t think I changed the world with music, but I think I helped a few people.”
Percy Hall is the recipient of many awards recognizing his achievements and contributions to the field of music education, including the Ohio Music Education Association’s (OMEA) Outstanding Music Educator of the Year Award in 1987, and the OMEA Distinguished Service Award in 1995. Hall was inducted into the Ohio Band Directors Conference Hall of Fame in 1995. He has composed eight original marches for various levels – all of which have been performed a number of times by school bands in concert and large group adjudicated events – and one of the marches, The Buckingham Brigade, has sold over 300 copies in the U.S. and Canada. He has influenced hundreds of students who describe him as a “great” and “amazing” man who instilled in them a love of music.
But call Percy Hall a legend in Mansfield? That’s a term he’s not so sure about.
“I’m not sure what a legend is; I guess it’s somebody to talk about,” said Hall with a laugh. “That’s very heartwarming. It’s very gratifying to say that, but I’m not sure. I didn’t go out and say, I’m going to be a legend. I just tried to make music come alive to people young and old. And I’m very grateful to have had the opportunity to be a teacher.”
