ROCKINGHAM-Longtime Bellows Falls Middle School (BFMS) music teacher Stanley Rumrill Jr. has been named the Vermont Music Educator of the Year by the Vermont Music Educators Association (VMEA).
Last spring, Rumrill was named the Vermont District 6 Music Educator of the Year and, this fall, he was chosen from that group of district awardees for the statewide recognition. All music educators in grades K–12 qualify to be nominated.
"I'm humbled by this," Rumrill said. "It's great, and I really appreciate it."
It is especially sweet, he noted, because "this is where I went to school. I'm a product of this district. I hope it shines a light on our program."
The award is not an overnight recognition. Rumrill has taught music for well over three decades, with 2025 marking his 25th year as a music educator at BFMS.
Like many others, Rumrill's path as a musician and educator was not a straight one. It had plenty of twists and turns.
Joining the school band
In second grade, Rumrill remembers, he took piano lessons for a time, but with a lack of practice the lessons went nowhere.
Then in fifth grade, his first year at BFMS, one of his friends was heading to sign up for band. That sounded better to Rumrill than what he had planned on doing, so he went with his friend.
"I figured I'd go down and check it out," he said.
Like many a middle school student, Rumrill did not put a huge amount of thought into his choice of instrument. His friend was signing up for tenor sax, so he figured he would also. Plus, he was one of the bigger kids in fifth grade, and he could handle carrying the saxophone in a parade.
"So, I signed up because my friend was doing it. He stopped in a couple of weeks, but I kind of stuck it out," Rumrill said.
Getting involved in music also taught Rumrill one of life's most important lessons - the more you mindfully practice something, the better you get at it.
"I had a great time at the middle school," he said. "I figured out that I had to practice, and by the end of seventh grade, I had really progressed."
He made another discovery around the same time. "I found out I could sing pretty well."
The school put on the musical You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, and Rumrill tried out, surprising himself by getting the lead role.
For a kid who had been quiet, shy, and lacking in self-confidence, "that was a life-changing point for me," Rumrill remembers, and he came out of that experience a lot more self-assured and focused.
He continued to make good progress with his music when he moved on to the Bellows Falls Union High School. As many a band and theater kid can attest, those pursuits in school also come not only with a group of supportive peers, but also dedicated teachers - usually former band and theater kids themselves.
"The band room was my homeroom," Rumrill remembered, "no matter what homeroom I actually was assigned to."
Looking back, Rumrill also had no hesitation in naming three teachers who had a huge impact on his life.
He credits Burt Martin, his middle school band teacher; Bill Von Gillern, his music teacher in high school; and Marion "Ma" Roche, who ran the theater program, with believing in him and helping him shape his life around music.
Von Gillern ran a summer music program that helped him hone his music skills, and he was part of a sax quartet. "There were a lot of moments in both middle school and high school that helped me build my skills," he said.
In his junior year, Rumrill made All-State in both band and chorus. He had to pick one or the other, and he chose band. The time spent in focused practice paid off. He was named first chair for tenor sax.
Music continued to be his major interest through his senior year, but Rumrill had no plans for after high school.
After graduating from BFUHS in 1980, he found himself playing in some side rock band projects, and he moved in that direction. Instead of going to college, he was pumping gas and playing sax and singing in a sax, guitar, and drums trio.
"We were doing songs like [Ted Nugent's] "with the sax doing the solo," he said with a laugh.
When the other members of the band went on to college, the group broke up, and Rumrill spent the next three years dividing his time between Vermont and staying with friends in Washington, D.C., working on his music.
Trying to figure out how to make a living playing music was challenging. It also carried its own lessons. "Finding out what you don't know, but should - that's pretty cool," he said.
Another local Vermont musician, Floyd Lawrence, and his wife, Sue, moved down to D.C. as well in 1983, and Rumrill lived with them and played music with Floyd.
"Floyd made it a lot of fun," Rumrill remembers.
Back to school
Over the next few years, Lawrence would go on to form the band Intercept, which is based in Westminster and still going strong, and Rumrill would create the band Foul Play.
"At the time a band could get regular gigging, and a decent band could make good money," Rumrill said. "But at 22, I asked myself, 'What am I going to be doing at 40? Still pumping gas?'"
He decided to go back to school, and he was encouraged to pursue his music further, becoming a voice major at Keene State College. Rumrill started college a single man, met his future wife through some of his friends there, and graduated college married with three kids. He's had one more child since then.
Rumrill continued to pursue his vocal work over the years, taking master classes, soloing in oratorios and operas, performing with the Vermont Opera Theater and with the former Brattleboro Opera Theater.
In the end, with his wife, Karen, and their growing family, he decided to pursue a career in music education instead of in opera, while still performing on the side when possible.
Rumrill's side projects over the last three decades have continued to include rock bands, where he sings and plays bass, keyboards, and saxophone. One of his better-known bands was The Stage Potatoes, whose final gig was playing at his 40th high school reunion.
He was a student teacher in Walpole, New Hampshire, and his first teaching job after his graduation, in the 1992–93 school year, was as a long-term substitute teacher for K–8 general music in Westmoreland, New Hampshire.
He then took a position teaching music at Kurn Hattin Homes for Children in Westminster. He taught there for four years, working beside and learning from highly regarded music educator Lisa Bianconi, an experience he speaks of fondly.
Karen Rumrill is a house parent at Kurn Hattin, and the family has lived there on campus for well over 30 years. "Teaching at Kurn Hattin was a great experience, and a very short work commute," Stan said, laughing.
Rumrill says he loves teaching, but it "takes a light touch, and you find out what your niche is."
He was discovering his. After Kurn Hattin, Rumrill took a music teaching position at BFUHS. A year later, he applied for the band director position at BFMS, where his personal musical journey had started, and has been there since the 2000–01 school year.
Rumrill describes his first years at BFMS as challenging, partly because scheduling for band members was "a mess, chaotic."
Building a schoolwide band program starts in 5th grade, he said, and class scheduling wasn't helping. "If you want to have a band, you've got to have a spot and time where all the members can all be together and play. It took five years to make that happen and rebuild the band program."
'Through music they can have these amazing experiences'
Part of the key to Rumrill's success as a music educator is that he feels it's important to give kids "a music experience that goes beyond" the walls of the school.
He started getting his students into a statewide music festival where the musicians were given ratings from the music staff at Castleton State College.
"We went for 14 years," he said. "We got a superior rating - the highest rating you can get - for 13 of those years. You really have to have it together to make that happen."
In 2012, he took band members to New York City for three days, where they played a concert at the Statue of Liberty. The band has performed in Washington, D.C., first in 2015 at the World War II Memorial and, during another five-day D.C. trip in 2017, at the Lincoln Memorial.
Students remember those trips for a lifetime.
"I wanted to show them that through music they can have these amazing experiences," Rumrill said, "and meet amazing people."
Those trips also exposed the kids to the camaraderie created in making music with others, which Rumrill described as "a very intense experience."
He said that it has been especially satisfying to see several of his former students go on to careers in music, including as teachers, music educators, band directors, and performers. One student has recently become a music therapist.
Rumrill also said how much he appreciates living in a community that values music programs in its schools. Music education, along with art, are notoriously often the first programs cut when school boards have budget concerns, and he said he has had to deal with that at times over the years.
"The town has really supported the band program," he said, to the extent that parents have come to school board meetings to fight cuts to the music program. "We've been lucky. To have support from your town is great."
Cancer and Covid
In recent years Rumrill has faced two serious challenges, one personal and the other global.
He spent 2017 and 2018 fighting prostate cancer, from which he says he has completely recovered.
Then the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic "wreaked havoc on the band program," he said.
"It will take years to recover," Rumrill said. "Students start learning their instruments in fifth grade. That didn't happen during Covid, so while there are now over 20 beginner band students, only three eighth-grade band students made it through Covid and are still in the program."
Rumrill said that the sixth- and seventh-grade group "are really coming along. But with only a few band eighth-grade members moving on to high school, he said the "Covid dip" will be felt there over the next few years.
"The dip is coming now," Rumrill said. "I hope people have patience. We are getting over this hump. We just had a successful winter concert. We're almost there. Things are starting to feel like the old band. It's really starting to come around again."
Rumrill noted that BFMS Choir Director Ellen Boles is "doing a great job bringing chorus back. They are getting better all the time. She's going to do a spring musical for the first time since 2011."
Rumrill noted that the epidemic disrupted the face-to-face work necessary in education, and especially in music.
"If kids don't see other kids doing it, it's hard to convince them that they can do it," Rumrill said. "To perform, to work out with an ensemble - you can't overstate how powerful this is. We're finally seeing that."
Rumrill said that the personal rewards of his career in music have been substantial, including the fact that he knows of very few other people who have been able to sustain a living just from music.
"I'm excited about music. I couldn't imagine myself not performing. It's made all the difference. I'm living the dream - I get to come to school and play music with kids every day. It's awesome."
This News item by Robert F. Smith was written for The Commons.