A $ commitment to help UMM's aspirations

We were pleased to get a thank you card from Stacey Aronson and Bradley Miller the other day. Mom and I are pleased to have made a financial infusion to UMM Humanities. We made a financial infusion to the music department, quite logical since my late father Ralph founded the music department. I wrote up some background material on our whole family's background with UMM. I submitted this to the appropriate department within UMM which requested it. I have learned that this has been edited down quite a bit. As a journalist I fully understand this. Nevertheless I wish to share the entire text, which I am doing with this post today. I have my own communications platforms. I guess I don't even care if UMM publishes anything I submitted. I am my own journalist. The image you see with this post is of mom Martha H. Williams in her well-known "gait" across the UMM campus, in her role as post office supervisor. Many years have passed since our direct involvement with UMM. Employees there are less and less aware. Knowledge of the past enriches our present. Maybe we can even hear Dad's "UMM Hymn" again someday. But that decision lies in someone else's hands. If you read what I present below, you'll note that I affirm UMM's historic core mission. In the past I have shared a little skepticism of that - the pure liberal arts commitment - but in the spirit of wanting to show faith in UMM's leadership, in rooting for their goals, I do in fact affirm the mission. Good luck on that. - B.W.

Why give to UMM music? Our family wants to be sure to have a connection to UMM's present as well as its past. We are inspired to give to UMM based on our conviction that UMM's mission will remain as viable as ever. Our family's background is inextricably tied to the University of Minnesota. The late Ralph Williams was a founding faculty member of UMM. He had a background with the U before we came here. He was a graduate of the U and taught at the U's St. Paul School of Agriculture in the 1950s. Ag schools were heading toward obsolescence. Morris had this nice if challenging transition from the WCSA to the pioneering UMM: a small public liberal arts college. The grand experiment would seem to have turned out quite nicely! Students have been happy here even when the campus had fewer amenities. 

We give to music at present because this was my father's life. He invested a big part of this life here in Morris. He directed the band in its debut performance on November 5 of 1960, at the old armory where the public library is now. That concert represented the kind of campus/community bond that has always been held up as an ideal. The concert was for an audience of about 1000 composed of Stevens County 4-Hers and their parents. There were 50 band members. "A band of this size was not anticipated the first year," the Morris paper reported. 

My Mom Martha Williams was UMM post office supervisor and worked at the bookstore before that. She was known for her "gait" across campus as she handled chores for the post office. She was very thoughtful toward her student workers. She played violin in the original UMM orchestra which was directed by my father. That group along with the men's chorus put out a vinyl record album.

What about me? I came to campus often on behalf of the Morris newspaper. I wrote many sports articles in the days when UMM sports information had more limited resources than today. We're talking pre-Internet! I enjoyed writing about UMM soccer in its debut year.
I played trumpet in the West Central All-Stars in the early days of Jim Carlson's fabulous Jazz Festival. Jim had been a member of my father's men's chorus. I was recruited to fill out the concert band's french horn section for a short time in the late 1960s when I was merely junior high age. It was interesting because I soaked in the feeling of campus turbulence in the Viet Nam war era. I showed up for rehearsal one day when rehearsal was canceled due to a Viet Nam "moratorium" - remember those? - at Edson Auditorium. Rather than just leave I grabbed a chair and listened. I was in the band for graduation that year, very memorable. We are blessed not having a war tearing apart our society today.

How do we want to see out gift applied? We defer to the department chairman in this regard. We may pick up a British accent yet! We hope the gift furthers the spirit of networking that friends of the campus feel. It's all about community. In music this is easy to appreciate because of the regular music concerts. Music enriches, entertains and serves a public relations purpose for the institution. All that was borne out when my father took the UMM men's chorus to the Seattle and New York World's Fairs. The chorus opened the Minnesota Day program at the Seattle event. 

The Williams family is delighted to make a contribution ($10,000) that will help ensure that UMM music keeps its exciting and enriching quality. We have fond memories of UMM Founders Day events where we'd get to hear students sing my father's "UMM Hymn" which he wrote for UMM's inception. We are giving in the spirit of "giving back."

- Brian R. Williams