ARLINGTON — How does one pack up after teaching 35 years — an entire career — in one school?
Arlington High School vocal music teacher Lyle Forde doesn’t know yet. He looks around the choir room, smiles and apologetically shakes his head. There are piles of music all over the floor, chairs in disarray and thank-you notes plopped on music stands.
June 23 is the last day of class, and his students expect to sing up to the last minute. The clean-up project can begin the next day.
Hundreds of Forde’s current and former students, their parents and loyal community audience members are set to attend his retirement party Saturday.
The event includes a tribute concert offered by alumni who plan to perform many of the songs Forde taught them over the years.
Among the crowd will be generations of Forde students, such as Rick Love, who played the drums during Forde’s first years of teaching, and Hayden Love, Rick’s son, who played drums for Jazzmine this past school year.
The award-winning Jazzmine choir was Forde’s answer to the average high school swing choir and the pop music most performed.
“We did all kinds of music, but jazz was the challenge and the focus,” Forde said. “It wasn’t long before Jazzmine took on arrangements similar to what you see on the TV show “Glee.” The truth is we’ve been putting on Glee-style shows, with the chorus lines of Broadway and the glitz of Vegas, for the past 25 years.”
Forde, nearly 60, is one of the school district’s longest-serving employees*.
He is known not just for his students’ musical accomplishments, but as a teacher who has encouraged all of his kids to do their best and to find joy in music.
“Without a doubt, Lyle Forde has changed lives,” said Bill Kmet, whose son performed in Jazzmine. “It will be a sad day for the community when he is no longer helping to grow our kids.”
Forde grew up in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Everett, the son of a commercial fisherman, and graduated in 1969 from Cascade High School. There he played French horn and performed in musicals alongside Patrick Duffy, who went on to play Bobby Ewing in the TV series “Dallas.”
Forde attended Bible college, went to Everett Community College and finally graduated from Seattle Pacific in 1976. He earned his master’s degree from Western Washington University in the late 1980s.
When Forde went to apply for the job in Arlington, Dick Post. then the superintendent, greeted him dressed in a flannel shirt and suspenders.
“It wasn’t a regular school day,” Forde said. “But, still, I thought, oh, this is rural.”
Arlington Mayor Margaret Larson, who is retired as the school district’s finance director, was working in the high school the September day in 1976 when Forde showed up for his first day of teaching.
Larson told him he needed to use the student entrance to the building.
“He was so young looking, I thought he was a new kid at school. He still looks young,” said Larson, who has attended every Jazzmine choir concert. “Lyle is one of the reasons Arlington is so special to those of us who live here.”
About a third of Arlington High students, around 200, sang in school choirs in 1976. Ford added a guitar class, a piano class and more choirs. With the production of the musical “Godspell” a few years later, Forde had the attention of the community.
In 1988, Jazzmine needed to raise money for a tour. Forde, the students and their parents produced a dinner show that upped their game.
“Spaghetti was the gourmet meal we served that year,” Forde said. “I don’t remember how much money we raised, but I saw tremendous growth among the students. We began to pay attention to performance.”
Jazzmine was one of the groups that helped raise money for what became the 700-seat Byrnes Performing Arts Center, owned jointly by the school district and the city. During the past four years the center has been the venue for all of Jazzmine’s stage shows, and each year, all six performances sold out.
Jazzmine has won awards at competitions staged at colleges in California, Texas and Florida. The select choir performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City. And on May Day in 1992, the group sang at a banquet in the Kremlin on the invitation of Moscow’s mayor, who had visited Snohomish County the year before and had heard the choir sing.
On Jazzmine’s set list that day was the 1950s-era song “Let There Be Peace on Earth (and let it begin with me).”
“As we sang, one by one, people began to stand and raise their arms, like a salute. I couldn’t fight the tears,” Forde said. “Afterward, then Secretary of State James Baker came over and told me that we had done with one song what takes diplomats years to accomplish.”
The final Jazzmine concert under Forde’s direction was June 10 at Bellevue College. Jazzmine opened for the college choir directed by Tom Almli, who is just one of Forde’s former students who have made a career in music.
Jazzmine member Jordan Tanguay, 17, who just graduated from Arlington, feels lucky to be among the class who were with Forde during his last four years, and the first class to perform all their shows in the performing arts center.
“We got to be part of the apex of his career,” Tanguay said. “It wasn’t just about music, though. He was inspirational.”
Taped to Forde’s chalkboard, lined with the staffs of treble and bass clefs, is a skull and crossbones that reads: “Tune it or Die.”
It’s a joke. Sort of.
“The reason we have done well and engaged our community is that we have done our best,” Forde said. “It takes more than being a cheerleader to get these results. You must demand perfection. Students have told me that the music that helped them grow as musicians was the classic choral work, the difficult pieces.”
Forde is happy he encouraged generations of Arlington students to appreciate music and that he built relationships between the school and the community.
“We needed the support of local service clubs and businesses,” he said. “And the parents of my students would have crawled across broken glass to help us out.”
Forde’s concern for the future isn’t who will replace him, but for funding for arts education in general.
“Can you imagine a world without music?”
Forde said he’s not done teaching, though he’s not sure what form it will take next year.
He and his wife, Lois, plan to do some boating and enjoy the company of their daughters Rachel and Noelle, and their new grandson, Collin.
“Music is part of the fabric of who we are and the society in which we live,” Forde said. “Music motivates, uplifts, comforts, provides pleasure and can be a soundtrack to our daily existence.”
Tribute show
The retirement party and tribute concert for longtime Arlington High School music teacher Lyle Forde is 7 p.m. Saturday in the Byrnes Performing Arts Center, 18821 Crown Ridge Blvd.
Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427; gfiege@heraldnet.com.
* Correction, June 16, 2011: An earlier version of this story misstated the length of Forde’s tenure.
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