Band law sparks memories, and more music

Sometimes, a column leads me to something unexpected. Last month's column on the Iowa Band Law is one of them.

Where it led me is to Elsie Dockendorff's front door in Washington, Iowa. She greets me wearing a shirt proclaiming that she's 35,794 days old, or at least she was on her 98th birthday on April 2.

Her daughter, Jan Boland, co-founder of Red Cedar Chamber Music, tipped me off. It turns out Elsie's father was state Rep. John Henry Stimson, a lawmaker from rural Page County who sponsored the band law in 1921.

The family still clutches a yellowing copy of the bill, which permitted towns to levy a small tax to pay for municipal bands. It has kept the music playing in several places, including Cedar Rapids, to this day.

And the band law's founding father, legendary Clarinda band leader Major George Landers, was a Stimson family friend and frequent visitor to Elsie's farm. Best of all, Elsie's memories are vivid. And she's willing to share. Well, mostly.

'Major Landers was an old flirt,” Elsie says, after a few moments pause to consider what her mother would think.

Landers met with Rep. Stimson in Clarinda to pitch the band law idea. It became law in 1921, prompting many Iowa towns to form bands and several states to pass similar laws.

Rep. Stimson fell ill a few years later and died when Elsie was 5, leaving her mother, Anna, a widow with six children, ages 5 to 18.

Softening the blow was their tight-knit community of Pleasant Ridge, which was basically a church surrounded by many small farms with large farm families. Every event was a community event. Love, help and support were always just down the road.

And it was in that fertile ground that Major Landers planted a band. The Pleasant Ridge Community Farmers Band. He plucked roughly 30 farmers with no musical experience out of their fields and on to the bandstand. The group included Elsie's four brothers: Jake on trumpet, Stanley on trombone, Fred on saxophone and Harold on cornet.

'It was unbelievable that farmers, people that didn't have money, no musical training,” Elsie says. 'It goes to show that a lot of people have a lot of music in them, it just isn't developed.”

Even the band's practices drew a crowd. And after practice, Landers often came to the Stimsons' place for dinner. fried chicken and homemade ice cream.

'And while she was cooking, she'd always come out and sit on the porch swing with him. She'd always have me sit in the middle. I understood why she had me there,” Elsie says.

See 'old flirt” above.

'It just made our community blossom,” Elsie says of the farmers' band. It wasn't long before Pleasant Ridge was home to a singing club and a homegrown playwright. When the church was hit by lightning and burned down, folks raised money for a new community building. Wallaces Farmer magazine named Pleasant Ridge the most progressive community in Iowa, with a $100 prize and much ado.

'Everybody had so much pride,” Elsie says. 'Our world was that community.”

Elsie has much to be proud of herself. She went to Iowa State University and became a teacher. Her daughter, Jan Boland, is an accomplished musician who, fittingly, won the Major Landers Scholarship from the Iowa Bandmaster's Association.

And this past week, Elsie had her 98th birthday bash. With plenty of fried chicken. Somewhere, Major Landers is smiling, the old flirt.

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