“I’m going to finish my book of columns this year.”
— I said that. Which means I really have to do it now.
Reviewing columns you’ve written about people off and on for most of your life brings to mind some that stand out more than others. Like one I penned about a Naples resident while at The Monitor. During my first newspaper job.
The date on it was May 13, 1976.
Somewhere among the collections of good advice and old sayings, there is one admonition that Andrew J.
Young of Naples has apparently followed throughout his life.
“Keep a song in your heart.”
When I visited him recently, he showed me songbooks beside his bed marked with page numbers on the front. Selected pages reveal their significance where credits read “Copyright 1953 by Stamps Quartet Music Co., Inc. Words and Music by Andrew J. Young.”
A piece of letterhead stationery in a scrapbook announced Andrew J. Young — teacher, scoring for orchestra, arranging, songs, anthems, and choral pieces, composer and editor.
Born in Marietta, 82 years ago, Young said he was a farm boy until he was nearly 23. “I was raised on the farm,” he said. “But when I left it—I left it.”
Music has been his life’s work.
“Been playin’ the piano since I was five years old,” he said matter- of-factly.”
“My mother sat me down in her lap and started me out just like she did my sister.
Made me play five days a week, all the time I was at home.”
Then leaning closer with a gleam in his eye, Young added, “I hated it. Thought it was something for girls only, you know, kind of sissy.”
“In 1917, I went off to the war. Wasn’t quite 23 years old,” Young remembered.
“They gathered up several thousand of us and sent us to England. I had signed up for the Air Corps, so they put me in a group that trained us the basics of f lyin’ an airplane.”
“They f lew ‘Jenny’s’ back in those days,” he recalled thoughtfully. “Didn’t even have parachutes. Came home after Armistice Day and haven’t been in one since.”
Young’s thoughts drifted. He gazed, pointing toward the sky with his cane. “See that jet goin’ across the sky?” Bringing his thoughts closer to earth, he continued, “I’m gonna fly in one G of them someday, just to see what it’s like.”
While his love has been music, his labor has been a brick and plaster mason. Young said he’s done quite a bit of work in the area, including the David Granbury Memorial Hospital at Naples and the school building and rock fence at the James Bowie School at Simms.
“Mr. Andrew,” as he is known by almost everyone, is probably best remembered for conducting the old singing schools that used to be a way of life in northeast Texas. Three-week affairs.
Eighteen days, eight hours a day of the science of music.
“I started teaching singing schools before the war,” Young said. “Taught them all through the years.
Taught 57 in Cass County alone. More than anyone living or dead.”
“You know, there’s joy in takin’ someone who can’t even sing … never even thought about carryin’ a tune and teachin’ them about music,” he said.
“Day before yesterday, I was in Wyninegar’s (drug store),” Young laughed. “This fellow came up to me and said, ‘I think l know who I’m talkin’ to. You taught me in a singing school at Rocky Branch in 1915.’
And I told him he was right, except it was 1916. l remembered it because I taught the one at Rocky Branch right before I went into the war.”
After working in California, Young said came back to Naples.
“Heard that there was a lot of work goin’ on in Texarkana. So, I moved over there and wound up stayin’ several years.”
“The seventh day of August last year,’ I was brought to Naples and put in the hospital with pneumonia.
Didn’t know anyone or anything for 27 days.
I was brought from the hospital to here at Redbud (nursing home) and have been here ever since.”
“With the help of the folks here and above,” Young added, pointing his cane upward, “I have gained my strength back and can play the piano again and walk town every day.”
Still active in piano playing, Mr. Andrew plays for various activities at Redbud.
He maintains the pianos and keeps them in tune. In addition, he advertises actively for piano repairs and tuning
work.
If everyone were given one sentence to describe their life, Andrew J. Young could have done no better when he said, “Singing and playin’ the piano ... it’s been my life.”
