WDPR 88.1 FM — Voice of the Arts
Your Classical Public Radio Station in Dayton Ohio

January 3, 1938 - May 3, 2009

Montgomery County Arts and Cultural District
Lifetime Achievement Award Acceptance
July 14, 2005

Lifetime Achievement Award:  that sounds so terribly final, doesn’t it?  I guarantee you; I’m a work in progress.  First of all, thanks to Georgie Woessner and the Dayton Public Radio Board of Trustees who nominated me for this…and then certainly the Montgomery County Arts and Cultural District and our County Commissioners.  I’ll have a little bit more to say about you later on.

Many years ago there was a cover on New Yorker Magazine.  Down at the bottom there was a little green strip marked East River.  Then there was an enormous amoeba shaped blob taking up a great deal of the page and it said Manhattan.  Then on top of that, another little green strip said Hudson River…and then this unmarked tiny little strip on top of that, and then more water and it said Pacific Ocean.   And that’s the set of a mind of a person growing up in New York, that there was nothing west of the Hudson River except this arid whatever.  You know, San Francisco was at the other end of an airplane. Nothing in between.  You got in one door, got out the same door and the cities had changed, that’s all. 

With New York City Opera, I traveled a great deal on the bus and truck tours, but there you spent all day in the bus, arrived in a new place and a city was a hotel, a restaurant and a theatre.  That was it.  You went back to the hotel afterwards, got on the bus the next morning and sooner or later, you were back in New York.  Well, that’s sort of where I was when I got a call from my manager in late fall 1974 saying “Dayton Philharmonic needs a new music director and they would like you to come out and audition.”  I said, “What the heck, let’s give it a try.” 

So I came out and met with the Dayton Philharmonic one evening and we worked through two separate pieces for two and a half hours and that was that.  What I found, very delightedly, was an orchestra that still liked music and that’s not as simple as it sounds.  You start dealing with the New York union orchestras and if you’re doing a new piece, they’re wonderful.  If it’s your lot to be reviving La Boheme which they have played two million times…..it’s hard to get it moving.  So here were 60 some people who still liked music, were terribly cooperative and I had a wonderful time for two and ahalf hours.  The next day I met with the members of the selection committee, and discovered some very knowledgeable people and some very nice people.  Then I met with members of the board and found the same thing.  No super stuck up “arty” types, just regular people who were interested in their orchestra and in their community.  I went away saying, “Well, that was fun. We’ll see what happens.”  And a couple weeks later, I got a call that said, “You got it.”  Grand.  I came out in early spring of 1975, found a place to live, went off to conduct in San Francisco for the summer and came back and started in as the music director of the Dayton Philharmonic in the fall of ‘75, exactly 30 years ago.  I stayed for a long while, enjoyed it, had a great time.  I see Curt Long over there.  I still think of the Philharmonic as my orchestra, Curt.  I just let Neal do all the work.

Besides that, over the twelve years that I was with the Philharmonic, I became addicted to Dayton. I found an incredible city, not a good city, an incredible city, a wonderful area alive and pulsating with a desire for the arts and culture and performances and all of the good things that I really believed in.  And plus I made an enormous number of great friends and by the end of that time that I figured the Philharmonic needed new blood, I knew I was going to stay here.  I wanted to live in Dayton. Airplane travel was becoming easier, when I went someplace else I could go and come back.  I thought maybe I would get to rest a little bit, slack off slightly, never happened.  All of my good friends kept pushing me through doors that needed to be opened.  It just turned out that way.  While I was still with the Philharmonic, the Dayton Opera changed managements and at that time Jackie Lockwood and a couple  other people on that Board pushed me through the door into Dayton Opera which has now lasted 24 years, a constant and very nice relationship with the Dayton Opera.  Then suddenly Stanley Garber and Tucky Monroe, rest her soul, pushed me into the Opera Funatics and I had a wonderful run with them.  Then Clark Haines, one of Dayton Public Radio’s founders, kicked me through the door into Theatre under the Stars and then ultimately 10 years with the Miami Valley Symphony.  Then John Kohnle and Clark, way back in the early 80s, had gotten me involved with this dream they had to have a public radio station.  And as soon as they flipped the switch in 1985, I did a couple years of a thing called Philharmonic Preview on Wednesday nights, the week before we did the Wednesday subscription concert; I had a two hour broadcast previewing what was coming up next week.  I became the music director in name for Dayton Public Radio in an advisory capacity.  Then, finally, around 1994, John Kohnle again kicked me through the door to go to Dayton Public Radio fulltime—and there I still am.  And that’s why it’s a work in progress. 

The main thing, I think, is that I lasted it out.  I’m still here and I’m very glad that I’ve lasted this long and in Dayton because one of the newest additions to the town is a dream come true, and that is the Marion and Benjamin Schuster Performing Arts Center.  The first day I walked in there and conducted the first ten notes, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.  After 29 years in Memorial Hall, that was heaven.  And so we have now a community that’s more active in the arts than ever before and that’s the way it should be.  It’s marvelous.  The Dayton Opera is in better shape than ever before; the Dayton Philharmonic is a wonder of the beginning of the 21st century.  Neal Gittleman is a perfect example of the right man in the right job at the right time.  I’m very proud of Neal’s handling of my orchestra.  And then we have the Human Race and all the other people that have gotten awards this morning, Dayton Ballet, DCDC to name just some of the musical organizations downtown.  And to top it all off, here we are one of the very few communities in America today who have, at least at the county level, government support for the arts.  These people cannot be thanked enough.  Chuck, Vicki. 

In our arrival at the 21st century, there are two more.  I’d like to thank Paul Katz for founding the Dayton Philharmonic and to thank him and Miriam Rosenthal for holding it together during all those formative years; otherwise, I wouldn’t be here.

Charles Wendelken-Wilson
July 14, 2005