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'73-'74 This was a beautiful and unforgettable year: the culmination of 29 years of superb directorship and the farewell to the man responsible for it all. Pappy Fehr, with his special brand of charisma, worked us until we were blue and then proceeded to win the hearts of all. In upper right corner, picture of the choir from the beginning of the year. Richmond Times Dispatch Mon, Apr 29, 1974 B-3 Retiring Choir Director Mixes Discipline, Warmth By Ron Sauder, Times-Dispatch State Staff WILLIAMSBURG - It would be hard to say whether his music or his students are of more importance to Dr. Carl A. Fehr, the fatherly man who has been director of the College of William and Mary choir for 29 years. Known to his students as "Pappy," Fehr is an old-fashioned disciplinarian who requires the men in the choir to wear "conventionally short" hair and no beards or mustaches. He also expects all choir members to submit their grades to him for inspection, saying, "a poor person in class does me no good." At the same time, Fehr maintains the kind of closeness with the choir that enables him to say "we have a genuine family feeling." He has a well-known soft heart that often attracts choir members with personal problems, particularly of the romantic sort. Fehr recalls the time years ago when he was called upon by a distraught student whose boyfriend had just ditched her by letter from Duke University. Fehr,always sentimental, soothed the girl and gave her enough money to catch a bus to Duke so that she could talk the problem out with her beau. They were eventually married, he said with a smile. After 29 years of being musician, disciplinarian, matchmaker and surrogate father for hundreds of students, Fehr is calling it quits this spring period. His last public performance will be the annual spring chorus and choir concerts at William and Mary Wednesday through Friday. "It's hard work. I don't really feel so sad about retiring," he said. "I've been teaching 45 years or so, and I'm just worn out." Being a choir director really is hard work the way Fehr goes at it. He takes his music seriously, drilling the choir six hours a week throughout the year and overtime on weekends before concerts. In addition to the 72-member mixed choir, Fehr has a 100-member girls' chorus composed mostly of freshman. Fehr said he finds many of his students weren't properly prepared in high school. So he drills them on the fundamentals: tone, diction, intonation and dynamics. He also has a strict "memory schedule" that results in the choir's knowing its entire program by heart by the time of its concerts. Practicing with Fehr can be grueling. One of his favorite devices is to single out individual members until he has a quartet or an octet and then to bid them sing from memory. "That really makes Christians of them," Fehr said. He readily acknowledges that his strict requirements - he calls them "Fehr discipline" - disenchant some students, who become choir dropouts. "Some of the students don't stick with me, because we really do work hard," he said. But Fehr thinks his discipline is as necessary to the success of the choir as is the discipline that a coach requires of a football team. One of the highlights of each choir year is the annual spring tour, which this year took 40 selected members to Halifax, Clifton Forge, Culpeper, Falls Church and York, Pa. Because Fehr hates selecting favorites, choosing the 40 is something of an ordeal for him. "You have to work so carefully that you don't hurt people's feelings," he said. "I have no favorites. I love all my students. I treat them all alike." Fehr is always proud of the tour groups. This year's group got especially admiring comments for its behavior, he said. The girls wore dresses and the boys wore coats and ties. "It was a pretty picture." "I tell them 'You're not only representing the choir, you're representing the College of William and Mary. As soon as you get on the bus, you're really on performance. People are watching you.'" Most of his reputation as a matchmaker stems from romances that suddenly blossom as students are thrown together for long bus rides on these tours, Fehr said. Right now, he said, there's a "hot romance going" that started on the last tour. "Some of them last and some of them burn to a crisp pretty quick." Fehr's choirs have received quite a bit of public recognition. In 1965, the William and Mary choir was name the official state choir and sang at Virginia Day at the New York World's Fair. In 1969, the choir won a George Washington Honor Medal from the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge as the result of a performance at a memorial service for President Dwight D. Eisenhower in Washington. And for five years in the late 1960s, Fehr's choirs taped a Christmas television special that was seen in about 25 cities, including Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. Despite all that, Fehr said his biggest satisfaction as a choir director has been the "loyalty, devotion and affection" of his students after they graduate. "I've had just some wonderful students," he said. "They've been so fine to us through all the years." On Saturday about 180(?) of his former choir members are going to return for what is being billed as a "Fehr-Well Fest." Fehr, as always the musician at heart, plans to pack them and his current choir and chorus members all onto the stage at Phi Beta Kappa Hall to form a chorus of about 350. "It's really going to be something." he said. Carl A. Fehr Chancellor Professor of Music Carl A. Fehr was appointed Assistant Professor of Music in 1945. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1951 and to Professor in 1961. He was named Chancellor Professor in 1971. A musical perfectionist, a strict disciplinarian, a humorist and a showman, Professor Fehr in his twenty-nine years of service to the College has endeared himself to hundreds of students which developing a musical organization that has won national acclaim. Through concerts at the College, across Virginia and along the East Coast, and by locally and nationally televised performances the William and Mary Choir has gained an enviable reputation for the quality, variety and beauty of its programs. This is the achievement of "Pappy Fehr." Starting with a small group in 1945, he has built a Choir with an average annual membership of over 70 and an even larger Chorus by hard work, long hours of rehearsing, and talented direction. Many alumni who retain great personal loyalty and affection for Professor Fehr regard their experience under him as one of the highlights of their college careers. He will be greatly missed. BE IT RESOLVED, That the Board of Visitors acknowledges with deep regret the retirement of Carl A. Fehr and gratefully approves a change of his status from Chancellor Professor of Music to Chancellor Professor of Music, Emeritus, effective at close of the 1973-74 session, and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That a copy of this resolution on Minutes of this Board and a copy be transmitted to Professor Fehr. Formal picture of C.A. Fehr in white tie tuxedo.