Giving the gift of music

The twinkle in Ron Bond's blue eyes gives him away.

"Oh man, I haven't ice-fished since three or four …. days ago," he said, teasing out the suspense - will he say "years"? - before letting loose with a chuckle.

It's just a couple days after last week's Arctic snap began sending temperatures into the double-digits below zero. But the temptation is there to get a rise out of the energetic guy with a healthy crop of snow-white hair by questioning whether he might be getting soft, staying off the lakes in the January cold.

"Soft," though, is one word that just doesn't apply to the Columbia Falls singer, musician and avid outdoorsman.

Well, maybe it does, when referring to that spot in his heart for giving back to the people of his community.

Bond, with the staunch support of his wife Mary, founded and has been directing the Columbia Falls Community Choir at least since 1987. It could be longer, but that's the earliest concert program Mary has in their community choir scrap book.

He took a four-year hiatus, when Cathy Robinson stepped in as director, then picked up the baton again in 2004.

This year's concert will be April 12 at 7 p.m. It will be standing room only in the Columbia Falls High School's Little Theatre as the 100-plus voices offer up a rousing, spiritual, sentimental and jazzy program.

Bond will be front and center with his back to the audience. But when he turns to deliver program notes and his inevitable joke or two, there will be no question he's having the time of his life.

"The most fun choir I've ever had," he said, "is this community choir."

And Bond has had his share of singers.

He's a Walkerville native, growing up north of Butte. He sang with the show choir and in Butte's yearly high school operettas. His plans to be an English teacher changed when the director of music at Rocky Mountain College in Billings offered him a scholarship to come sing with his program. He played baseball all four years of college, and earned his master's degree from Colorado State College (now University of Northern Colorado).

"I never saw why I couldn't do both," he said. He stuck with that attitude.

The 42-year teaching veteran taught young singers throughout his career - the first year in Shepherd High School east of Billings and the rest in Columbia Falls, Hungry Horse, Martin City and West Glacier. And he went on to head-coach the Glacier Twins, coach Senior Babe Ruth and head the Pee Wee Baseball Association. He made it a point to coach teams only when his own children were on a different team.

For 10 years, he coached seventh-grade boys' basketball.

"They've got to have discipline," he said of his junior high students who are at the age that befuddles many adults. "You've got to believe in people and give them a chance."

That's the way he looked at all "his kids."

Even after coming back out of a short-lived retirement to teach music for 12 years at West Glacier School, he kept expectations high.

"I believe in life that attitude is everything," Bond said.

"That's a clich/, but I used it before I ever read it. I always told the kids in class, 'You never say I can't.' I would ask them, 'What's the name of the game?'" And, Bond said, they would shout their answer, "Try!"

He looked at those West Glacier students with a special fondness.

"They were my kids, they were just like my family," he said. "And I tell you, you talk about sharp in music. Holy cow, they were sharp."

But he looked at a lot of his students with that special fondness. He invested himself in them, living by the ethic that the most important thing in life is to get up in the morning and want to go to his job.

Bond does that with all of life.

He's a lifelong fly-fisherman, hooking his first fish on a fly rod his dad got him when he was just 5. He's a relentless hiker, in love with Glacier National Park, the Jewel Basin and dozens of other wilderness areas. He always loved to hunt, until the day he stood over a deer he'd just shot and told Mary that was the last time. He'd seen too much of their beauty as they met him on the trail, and wanted them to keep living that beauty.

He and Mary started dating in 1984 and were married in 1985. Until that time, she had never hiked and had a rough time with their first outing - a steep uphill in the first 50 yards.

Now she's tougher than him, Bond said, urging him outside on rainy days with a beguiling, "Come on, we won't melt."

And she's the one working with him behind the scenes to pull together the community choir that has become a Columbia Falls institution.

Bond starts a year in advance, playing through a library of music, choosing songs for a still-unknown grouping of voices and sending off to the publisher for performance rights.

He doesn't bother worrying whether Penni Chisholm, the choir's pianist, can handle the accompaniment. The Columbia Falls attorney, wife and mother is undaunted by the toughest scores.

The choir's administrative committee tackles everything else, organizing sheet music and singers, hosting a family chili feed to get acquainted, contacting sponsors, lining up a reception and arranging for post-concert performances at local retirement facilities.

Beginning in January, Bond writes out minute-by-minute time schedules of what needs to be worked on during each two-hour Sunday afternoon rehearsal. As soon as he hears what the choir can do - he said this year's 110 or so singers impress him with their depth and talent - he knows what can be tucked away and what still needs work the next week.

"We're a self-contained community now," Bond said of the people who make the trek from across the north valley to Columbia Falls every week. "We've got three doctors, a layer, (a judge), three nurses. You name it, we've got 'em."

It's a lot of work and a lot of time that the all-volunteer choir devotes, but it's far from drudgery.

"The purpose of our choir is to have fun," Bond said.

"I'm a believer that everybody owes something to the community. I may not be the best at it, but I'm willing to do it. And nobody gets paid to do it.

"I do it because I love it," he said. "When I don't love it, I'm not going to do it."

And his energy as he headed into his third week of rehearsal belies an unspoken promise - that's going to be an awfully long time.

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com