Musical career begins, continues at Trinity Lutheran Church, Ramona
Staff writer
Retired pastor Eugene Hicks of Herington was the band instructor at Centre High School when the new facility opened in the fall of 1958. Mardell Taylor was the home economics teacher.
As the year progressed, a romance blossomed between them. Their picture appears in the 1959 yearbook at the junior-senior prom with the caption, “the longest lasting friendship formed this year.”
They were married shortly after the close of the school year and will celebrate their 50th anniversary in 2009.
“Being a part of the process of consolidating and being in an ideal, new building (for then) was pretty heady stuff,” Hicks said.
Other instructors included Howard Collett, Goldie Steely, and the late Verona Mullikin. The late Lorene Smith was the school secretary.
The yearbook pictures the Centre band with 65 members, a color guard, twirlers, and drum majorette.
In the fall of 1958, the music room was not ready for occupancy, so the band met in the foyer.
Hicks’ musical career began as an organist at the age of 12 at Trinity Lutheran Church in Ramona, where he was baptized, confirmed, and later ordained. After retiring from the pastorate in 2000, he again plays the organ at the same church.
Hicks is a native of Ramona, having been born there in 1929. His parents operated the telephone exchange in Ramona.
Hicks said he remembers sitting on his mother’s lap while she connected callers with their destination.
In those days, Southwestern Bell operated party lines in rural areas. Each residence or business paid a monthly subscriber fee.
Hicks’ parents received a percentage of the proceeds. If someone failed to pay, it meant that much less money to live on.
Hicks’ father held other jobs to sustain the family, but he died when Eugene was six years old. When he grew older, Hicks helped his mother run the switchboard.
He said it got especially busy after a storm, when people called to report crossed lines or blown fuses.
Hicks said the long distance toll center was Marion. When home alone as a teen-ager and lonely on late nights, he and a couple of the nighttime operators at Marion connected and kept each other entertained.
“One delightful girl’s last name was Powell,” he said. “There was not much phone traffic at nights in those days and when Miss Powell had to complete a call to distant cities she would let me listen in and say, ‘Let’s take a trip to San Francisco.’ Sometimes the call would have to be routed through a couple of cities. It was great entertainment for a teen-ager during the bleak days of World War II.”
Hicks’ mother was a correspondent for the Marion Record-Review. When Hicks was a junior and senior in high school, he took over for his mother.
He took piano lessons sporadically as the opportunity arose and taught himself to play the organ.
He graduated with a class of seven from Ramona High School in 1947. After two months of summer school, he was accredited to teach. His first job was at Sunnyside, a one-room school east of Ramona.
At age 19, he became the principal at Tampa and taught seventh and eighth grade for two years.
He graduated from McPherson College in 1952, then enlisted in the Army for a four-year term.
He earned a master’s degree from Emporia State and began teaching music, first at Ramona, then at Centre High School.
After his marriage, he decided to follow his urgings to be a minister and entered Concordia Theological Seminary in Springfield, Ill.
After graduation, he spent the next 15 years as professor of music at St. John’s College (now closed) at Winfield.
His one and only pastorate was in two parishes north of Herington, which he served for 23 years before retiring in 2000.
He has been the organist at Trinity Lutheran Church for three years.
“I guess what goes around comes around,” he said with a smile.