Autumn Years Summer 2024

went to Preservation Hall his first night in town, and every night thereafter for the duration of his trip. Musically, Mark had never experienced anything like the jazz there. He would sit on the floor for four hours every night soaking in the sounds and sights, delighting in what he was learning. He was mesmerized by jazz trumpeters and band leaders Kid Thom as Valentine and Kid Sheik and the old style, traditional jazz they played. The summer after his first New Or leans trip, one of Mark’s former students who attended Tulane University and was

manities summer programs, which are awarded to only 50 teachers nation wide. Mark spent the summer of 1985 in Concord, Massachusetts, immersed in a program headed by a leading Henry David Thoreau scholar, highlighted by Mark’s exciting discovery of a missing Thoreau manuscript. What made this even more rewarding was Mark’s suc cess in securing permission to have one of his sophomore honors students assist with his manuscript verification research and join a Civil Disobedience class dis cussion. That student is now a college history professor. In 1995, Mark won the op

and after returning home listening to his expanding collection of jazz records. Al though Mark reads music, like his father, he also plays by ear. The following summer, the piano rental company offered Mark a free, old piano if he paid for the delivery. Mark’s former student said he and his room mates would like a piano in the house, so Mark arranged delivery and subsequent ly set out to tune it as best he could. Mark had witnessed many young mu sicians approach the Preservation Hall Band, seeking the opportunity to play with them. Each one got the same re sponse, “Ok, man, some day.” As a result Mark never asked to play with the band, but he did gradually get to know the mu sicians. “I knew I was the wrong color and age, but I also knew I could play with them,” says Mark. During his second summer in New Orleans, Mark had a party at his house and invited the Preservation Hall musi cians. Many came, and he finally got to play with them. “My old piano was not tuned to the modern A, so I had to trans Outside at the Middlebury Bread Loaf School of English.

living in a house off cam pus made him an offer he could not pass up. Aware of his former teacher’s music abilities and deep interest in the jazz played at Preservation Hall, he offered Mark the use of this house during the summer because it was empty. Mark headed to New Orleans with an air mat tress and had a rented

portunity to study in Greece for the summer. He also spent four summers in an intensive master’s program for teach ers and other professionals at the Middlebury Bread Loaf School of English in Vermont. The school was founded in 1920 by Robert Frost and the head of Harvard’s English de partment. Mark was an older student among the cohort and

Mark playing at the Middlebury Bread Loaf School of English.

piano delivered to the house for his use during the summer. He spent every night at Preservation Hall, and every day play ing what he heard the night before by ear

had been teaching a while. Classes were taught by visiting Ivy League professors, and Mark wove what he learned—about both content and teaching—into the high school classes he taught. Mark’s younger brother Keith, a cabi net maker like their father, is also musi cally talented. He, too, took piano lessons and sings. After visiting New Orleans with his college glee club, he told Mark he had to experience Preservation Hall. When a next door neighbor who was like another brother invited Mark to visit family with him in New Orleans one summer in the early 1970s, Mark seized the opportunity. Heeding his brother’s advice, Mark

Mark playing with the Kid Thomas Valentine Band at Preservation Hall, 1984.

SUMMER 2024 I AUTUMN YEARS 47