FAIRMONT — Eight summers ago, Michael Carpenter was a singer without a song.
The Fairmont native and WVU graduate had just found out he was joining the chorus of the unemployed.
He had been working in the medical industry, in a job he never really liked.
As it turned out, the pink slip that was the overture to his furloughed status also inspired his old choir director from his alma mater of Fairmont Senior High School to do some singing of his own.
“Now’s your chance,” Doug Bunner told him. “You can go to Fairmont State and study music, so you can do what you really want to do.”
A former student found the key — and agreed.
His graduate degree from Fairmont State took him all the way to a reservation in the rural reaches of Arizona, where he was the choir director and band director for a Navajo middle school and high school.
There, the newly minted music teacher let his training, and his muse, happily sing duets on the staff paper he scored for every performance and production.
Indigenous folk tunes.
Beethoven.
John Denver (“Country Roads,” of course).
And a powerful, profound chord he couldn’t ignore.
When he had a chance to return to West Virginia, and Marion County, the 37-year-old, just as happily, rode the beat back home.
These days, Carpenter is the choir director at East Fairmont High School, the crosstown rival of Fairmont Senior.
He talked about that Monday morning, as he took the microphone in a pavilion at East Marion Park.
The expanse of green is within hailing distance of the city’s Gateway Connector, a reaching hub for the region.As cars and trucks hummed past, and the occasional siren-wail could be heard, Carpenter said the arts are a hub, also.
The arts direct synapses to fire with both creativity and critical thinking, he said.
They inspire, he said, eye-welling reactions to the narrative nuance on the theater stage, and the sonic sweep in the concert hall.
Same old song and dance?
Now, he’s worried that Fairmont State will cease being a hub for the arts across the region.
North-central West Virginia in particular, he said, where band directors and choir directors are most generally products of the leafy campus on Locust Avenue.
Fairmont State’s Board of Governors last month voted to eliminate the school’s programs in music and theater education.
Costs are going up, they said, while enrollment is dwindling.
Plays and concerts will continue, the board said.
And Wallman Hall, the circular building home to it all, will continue spinning the activity.
There just won’t be any degree programs in those disciplines.
And that means no faculty mentors, no professional direction, no concentrated study.
In response, a grassroots group, “Falcons for the Arts,” a nod to the school’s feathered mascot. was formed.
Its numbers command the stage.
Around 4,000, Carpenter included.
And 2,400 recently signed an online petition protesting the board’s action.
About 30 came out Monday in the testimonial event designed to get the board to reconsider.
Members of the governoring board, plus school administrators, declined the invitation to also be there, organizers said.
The governors, though, did respond.
Dixie Yann, board president, said it was a somber, minor-key song.
“Decisions like these don’t come easy,” she said in a release.
“We share deeply in the heritage and tradition of our beloved university,” she continued.
“Yet, we understand that we were placed on this board to make sometimes unpopular decisions that will ensure academic and financial stability.”
Numbers — and a silent plea
Operating for the two programs this fiscal year total $917,402 to date, the board said, and that’s counting faculty salaries.
Just seven students are enrolled in the two programs, the board said.
The $195,720 they contribute in tuition strains like a scared kid trying to reach “the rocket’s red glare” note in the National Anthem, they said.
Read the script, though, the art boosters say.
Alternative funding sources always know their lines, the group said.
The music education major could remain.
The theater program could be to a minor.
Positive emotions simply can’t be measured in the metrics, Daniel Eichenbaum said.
Eichenbaum is an assistant professor of music who also recently made tenure.
Like Carpenter, he worked in Arizona before making his way to Fairmont.
He enjoys watching students from north-central West Virginia, standing in the doorway of what could be.
Many of them are the first in their families to go to college, and here they are, he said, trodding the boards and making the notes trill.
The professor and his wife recently purchased a home in the area, where they hope to settle in with their young children to savor the song.
Now he’s not sure that can happen.
At an event that was about voiced passion, he did the opposite.
He did that with a calculated pause, that, well, was for maximum drama.
“Without music, there’s only … silence.”
That last word was whispered.
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