Saturday, February 17, 2024
I was and am so deeply saddened to hear of Mr Stendel's death. I was one of many blessed students of his at West Monona and fell in the privileged spot of having him for all four high school years, graduating in '77. At that time, the Stendels were expecting. I have never forgotten that their son is named Elliot, though we've never met. I suppose knowing and remembering their son's name was important because Mr. Stendel's impact in my life had been so influential.
I didn't fully realize how good we had it at WM until years followed and his absence from our community was missed. His greatest attributes as a director, as you have probably heard or read countless times, was to lead the charge towards excellence. He had a way of commanding better and best from us. He instilled confidence and in his tireless efforts for better and best from himself he exacted it from us (and me), as well.
I was proud of the fact that we were both trombonists. I very fondly remember the Sunday morning we played a duet at Faith Lutheran church in Onawa. O Sacred Head, Now Wounded. I never sing or hear it without thinking of that morning.
He brought summer concerts to our community. He created the first, and possibly only, Music Appreciation class at West Monona. He had us competing and performing at places that few small-sized schools had ever heard of. Twice at Iowa Bandmasters was very rare. We made our presence known at Large Group contests. There's something about a 100 piece band from a high school of 350 or less that gets people's attention when they're performing college-level music and doing it well!
Jazz band contests were a blast! Contrary to one judge's opinion at UNO, I thought we handled a 7:4 nunber pretty well! 7:4! What was he thinking? Better. Best.
Small group season was just nuts! Mr Stendall had sooo many small groups formed. Often A, B and C groups of the same instrument mixes. Who did that then? Who does that today? Better and best --- from himself and from us!
And then there was marching band. A different show for every home game! Who does that!? Oh, and the stands lost a lot of people after the halftime shows. There was nothing subtle about the reason why many people came to the games. As an aside, my granddaughter starts practicing one routine in early August and that's all they do until the season is over. Ugh.
I'm not sure what month you were born, Elliot, but perhaps you should be grateful there was a letdown between marching band and contest seasons. ( ;
On a personal level, he took interest in my life and helped guide me to UNI, for which I'm very grateful. What teenager can't use some good guidance, directing, encouragement and friendship from someone like your Dad, Elliot and Penelope? I, with so many others, are glad it was from "Sir". Truth be told, if hackers want to find an answer to the web security question, "Who was your favorite teacher?", just type in Stendel. It will work for many, many people.
Please accept my sincere condolences.
Danny Stanislav
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