Music - the elixir of life

Finding a Happy Place

“The next year I was off to high school – Skyview High School, well-known for its music programs. I was in the orchestra, I was in the band, unfortunately, I didn’t have room for choir - I would’ve loved to have done that, they had a very interesting course for choir just tons of kids were in the choir. There were probably about 1800 kids in the three grades at my high school and we marched about 200 kids in the band and that’s without the [auxiliaries] flags.  John Manning was my band director and Robert Frost was my orchestra director. I still look back on these men as some of my best role models some truly fine, fine men and they just were there for the kids. It was great. I loved music. I was very quiet and very shy, but that band room that orchestra room, that was my happy place I would go hang out there with my friends and it was just a great experience.”

During her junior and senior year of high school, Lisa’s parents moved to Benson, Utah into a farming community. She still went to the same high school and basically hung out with her friends from band and orchestra. The school would have a marching band season and then switch over to a concert band for the rest of the year. John Manning was the band director and he had had an assistant teacher there. It was decided to hire another teacher that would kind of take over when John Manning was going to retire in a couple of years. A huge program of hundreds of students. His daughter Sherry Manning got the job. Lisa recalled, “She had a huge impact on my life, huge. She saw in me a lot of potentials; she saw that even though I was really quiet and painfully shy that I had a lot of abilities that I was also hard working and dedicated. She was a huge impact on my life. Sherry Manning came in and was teaching that year, she knew that I played the piano. They would have a jazz band in the mornings before school, it wasn’t a class at that time, it was just before school that she would have it. They had a piano player that had been playing for the jazz band who was a pretty good improviser and I was not. I was all about the notes, you would give me a piece of music, I would sight read, I can sit down and play it. This other girl was missing a lot of rehearsals and she was wanting to do some stuff with the modern dance club, so finally she got kicked out and Miss Manning came to me and asked me if I’d be willing to be in the jazz band. And I told her I don’t improvise, I don’t just sit down and play, and she said I can help you with, that I just need someone who is good to show up all the time and will be there. I was a person for that because I showed up all the time. Bless his heart my dad would drop me off, take me over to the high school three or four mornings a week to play in the jazz band and sometimes I would take the bus home after school but if I have to stay after for a rehearsal or something, that was a lot of dedication on his part.”

School Musicals

            Lisa had more opportunities in high school to develop musical talents. “Another thing that the high school did all the time, was that they put on big musicals and big plays. The fall was the big play that would be put on about the end of October or November and then they would put on a full-blown musical and I was always in the pit orchestra. We’d have like a 40-piece 50-piece orchestra playing there in front of the stage. One of the things about Utah - that my kids have always just been amazed at is - that there is a huge auditorium that would seat hundreds of students and it would also have this big stage on it. Huge full-blown stage with room in the front of it, where the pit was, where they put the pit orchestra. A full-blown musical with hundred kids in the cast, dancing, singing and so that was a great experience. I was in the pit orchestra all three years, the first year we did the Pajama Game, and the second year we did “1776” because it was 1976 and the last year we did “Guys and Dolls”.It was a great experience great memory we stayed after school for the rehearsals, and it was just a lot of fun. A lot of good times.”

            Lisa Bills graduated 10^thin her class of 535 students in 1977. She said she was a good test taker and good student and school was easy for her. She got an academic scholarship to Utah State in Logan, Utah.