David Meril Erdmann

How does one sum up a life lived in a few short minutes? It’s a difficult task, but what I’ll do is offer a brief biography and then share some observations about that life and the man who lived it.

David Erdmann was born in 1949 in Hettinger North Dakota, the middle of three boys. Dave’s father farmed next to Dave’s Uncle Kurt Erdmann. When they were not working on the farm or pursuing their schooling, the three boys (Tom, David and Bryan) and their cousins Greg and Hollis enjoyed what we would nowadays call a “free-range” childhood.

In the late 1950’s Dave’s family moved ‘to town’, so his father, a veteran fighter pilot, could purchase the local airport and run a crop spraying business. Dave’s happy family life was sadly interrupted when his father was killed a few years later while crop dusting. Life however continued for them with the support of a close family and a community of friends.

Music was a big part of David’s life even then. Cynthia was a church organist and the five boys became well known around town for their choral skills. Dave graduated from high school in 1967 and went on to obtain a bachelor of music from nearby Dickinson State College. Remarkably, many of the friendships he established there survive to this day, and these friends are here tonight. You’ll hear more about his subsequent musical career from them later.

Upon graduation, David started teaching at local schools and was still doing that in 1976 when a friend from College days invited him to move to Canada. There were good jobs in Edmonton, and already other friends had made the move. Plus North Dakota offers good training for Edmonton winters.

Dave came to Alberta in 1976, and indeed found work teaching band at Sherwood Heights school. He also joined a newly formed Wind Ensemble and the following year met a young woman from JP Composite High School, who also played the clarinet and shared his music stand. That was Gwenllian Evans. Eventually sparks flew and 5 years later they were dating. Dave never was one to rush things.

Because of the school board’s rules around citizenship, Dave elected to return to America in 1983 and Gwen followed. They settled in Minnesota, near to his brother Tom and family, and were married in on June 22, 1985 (Dave said it was the best party ever). I’d only just met David for the first time a month prior to their wedding. Curiously it was in Regina, Saskatchewan, although perhaps not surprisingly it was in a hotel bar. Independently finding ourselves at loose ends, on the eve of my brother Michael’s wedding, we had both gone down to hang out. This was where we enjoyed the first of what was to become many pleasant evenings together over food, wine and scotch. Although I think on that occasion it might well have been rum and coke (remember this was a Saskatchewan bar).

Missing Edmonton, and David deciding that becoming Canadian wasn’t such a bad idea, Dave and Gwen returned to Alberta, and for three years Dave found work at National Music. They bought the family home from our parents, and settled in. My nieces and nephew soon followed. Rachael in 1988, Jane in 1990, and Jack in 1994. With his citizenship issues finally resolved Dave returned to teaching and over the next 20 years taught music and math at Ellerslie, DS Mackenzie, and Brittania schools. During this time 15907 become perhaps best known for the famous Canada Day parties - some small, some large, but always a good party. This was David’s favorite holiday because, he said, it pretty much marked the end of teaching until September, and ushered in summer vacation! There were many holidays: musical and family tours to Europe (seven in all), visits to Victoria to see Grandparents, and Gwen’s annual vacation when Dave would take the children on a summer road trip to Hettinger, while she ‘worked’.

I didn’t really get to know Dave well until our family moved to Edmonton in 2003. That started a tradition that continues to today of Sunday supper, at one or the other of our two homes. A roast, some wine, cigars, grandmas, boyfriends, neighbors, cats, dogs, some arguments, loud conversation, and lots of opinions, not necessarily all rooted in fact. We celebrate all life’s milestones over these dinners - birthdays, graduations, departures, Thanksgiving, and of course Christmas. In the process, it’s been a delight to see our girls, Katherine and Susan establish close friendships with their cousins Jane, Rachael, and Jack. David too, loved ‘Kate and Suz’ like daughters. During the years that followed we also took a few of holidays together, once with the cousins and grandma to Yukon, and twice with everyone to Hawaii. The pictures you see over there were taken in Maui. Surrounded by family, and sitting on warm sandy beaches populated with pretty girls in bikinis, Dave was possibly as happy then as I’d ever seen him.

Dave retired from teaching in 2009 but being still too active to settle into a rocking chair, went back to work at St. Johns Music. Sadly, although looking forward to a comfortable retirement, Dave was diagnosed with cancer in late 2013, and despite aggressive treatment and a solid resolve, passed away last week on Tuesday, June 7 at just 67.

So, what kind of person was David? I have no special answers. It would be the height of arrogance for any of us to claim we “know” a person and what it was that makes them tick. But from the biography I’ve just outlined, from the holidays together, and the many evenings spend over food and drink, I think I can paint a picture of who Dave was. First and foremost, he comes from a world now fading into history, but still not lost to us. A world of small prairie towns, of Christian faith, and where a man’s reputation was determined by his hard work and his “word”. A place where family is the center of your world, because when times get tough, such as when Dave’s dad died, it is family, like his Uncle Kurt’s family, who are the people you can rely on. There’s little tolerance for braggarts and show offs in the small towns of the Great Plains. It’s also a world of surprising tolerance, in the sense that your personal foibles are your own affair, and what you will be judged by are your reputation for honesty, integrity, for how you support your family and community, and your work ethic.

And that’s who Dave Erdmann was. He was a modest man, honest, and hard working; kind and trustworthy. He was a teacher and a talented musician. He was tremendously proud of his family, especially the way Rachael with her French horn, Jane with her choirs, and Jack with his trombone, have carried on the family’s musical tradition. He would rarely admit it, but I suspect he was also always rather in awe of his wife, Gwen, and her amazing capacity to raise a family, cook dinner, walk the dog, advocate for her children, mediate arguments, advance her education, organize vacations, and still head off every day to slay the dragons of bureaucracy at Alberta Health Services. He loved Gwen and she loved him too, in that quiet and comfortable way that is so characteristic of happily long married people.

In many ways Dave Erdmann was a Stoic, not in the modern sense, but in the original Greek philosophical sense. One saw this in the way he faced his final few years. Fate, in the form of a stray bit of cosmic radiation, had delivered him a death sentence, but he faced the consequences bravely, pragmatically, and for the most part without complaint. Many hard decisions over the last few weeks were made by Gwen simply thinking, “What would Dave want me to do?”. Brain cancer is an ugly disease, and I remain in awe of anyone who can face it with the fortitude and equanimity Dave Erdmann displayed over his final few years.

But let’s not end on such a sad note. What I’d ask everyone here to do is to think of a happy memory; perhaps attending one of those famous Canada Day parties, or Trick or Treating with Dave on Halloween, or being stranded late at night on a band tour bus with 40 of your friends and several cases of donated wine somewhere in the South of France… or perhaps sharing some private jokes about principals, conductors, or percussionists. Dave Erdmann had a happy life and he left behind a wonderful legacy in his three kind, and smart, and talented children. Looking out at all the people here tonight he obviously touched many other people’s lives, and for that let us all be thankful.

Thank you David Erdmann for having given us an opportunity to get to know you, and for making my sister so happy for so many years. If, by any chance, there is an afterlife I hope you’ll find its got immaculate dog-free lawns, summer breezes, music, cigars, steaks, and of course great wine and good scotch.

Musical Memories and Eulogy ~ Written and Spoken by Fordyce Pier

Having been asked about the importance of music in our lives, the prominent American conductor, Robert Shaw, said that he thought of music as “... the undifferentiated projection of all that is good in mankind.” Shaw’s connection between music and the good in mankind makes it almost poetically appropriate that the life of David Erdmann, this quintessentially good man, was so thoroughly interwoven with music.

Dave and his two brothers, Tom and Bryan, were born into a musical North Dakota family, his dad being a clarinet player and very accomplished singer and his mom being a singer, pianist and organist. The three Erdmann brothers and their cousins formed the core of the one-room-schoolhouse choir. When the family moved into Hettinger in 1958, Dave was in grade five and took up the clarinet with Norm Smith as his music teacher.

Dave went to Dickinson State College in North Dakota to pursue music education. He did take a look at being a technical draftsman for one year, but decided music was it for him. While there he met lifelong musical friends – many here today - such as Diane Persson, Dennis Prime, Randy Noyes, Gordon Brock, Garry Silverman, Larry Blenkin, Ed Staples, Barb and Glen Acorn, Dave and Shirley Bray, Keith and Glen Traquair, Doug Scales, Robert and Sandy Brunelle, and many others. His brother, Tom and sister-in-law, Karen, are music teachers (now retired), and his brother, Bryan, is a sound engineer.

Dave moved to Edmonton in 1976 at the urging of Dennis Prime, and began teaching in Sherwood Park at Sherwood Heights, and later moved into the Edmonton Public Schools, teaching at Ellerslie, DS MacKenzie and Britannia. Having personally, adjudicated his bands at festivals and having heard the respectful comments of his colleagues, it is clear that the decades of students who had Dave Erdmann as their music teacher had the privilege of being taught by the very best. Some of them are active members of the musical community to this day.

Shortly after arriving in Edmonton, Dave became one of the founding members of the group that has come to be known as the New Edmonton Wind Sinfonia, or NEWS. Dave participated in this wind band as clarinet or bass clarinet player for 38 years, including the group’s six European tours and two recordings. Always among the group’s most reliable and dedicated musicians, Dave’s high personal standard of performance was a firm anchor in the clarinet section, and, indeed, the entire group. He was also a Member of the Board of Directors from 1997 to 2013, where he contributed meaningfully to NEWS’s development, musical direction and ultimate success as the valuable community musical asset it is today. Dave’s leadership in the musical community was further extended as Vice-President/Treasurer on the Board of Directors of the Alberta Band Association from 1992 to 1996.

Membership during the early days of NEWS carried other benefits. Also sitting in the clarinet section was a young Jasper Place High School clarinetist, Gwen Evans. A friendship developed, sufficiently, it has been reliably reported by Gwen’s mother, that both Marvin Eckroth and Don Harris, JP music teachers at the time, pulled Gwen aside to counsel caution in dealing with that Dave Erdmann. Ultimately to no avail: Gwen and Dave were married in 1985.

After his career as a public school music educator, Dave worked at National Music and St. John’s Music. Those of us looking for music, instruments, equipment or advice came to know that in Dave we had friendly, knowledgeable and reliable resource.

So, back to the beginning: a life interwoven with music. Music in his home life from his earliest days; music throughout public school; post-secondary music study; a professional career in music education enriching the lives of hundreds of students; rewarding musical performance experiences; finding the love of his life through a musical connection; and passing on his love of music to his devoted and appreciative children. And all of this contributed to the quintessentially good man we knew. The quiet courage with which he confronted his illness as it advanced, which I admiringly observed in our weekly trips to the Glenrose Hospital and the Pilgrim’s Hospice, seemed to me to rise in part from an innate musical sense of grace and dignity.

Dave Erdmann will be grievously missed as a family member and a friend, and also as a beloved contributor to the joy of music in our lives.

Formal Obituary

David M. Erdmann died peacefully at the youthful age of 67 on June 7th at the Norwood Hos-pice in Edmonton, Alberta. He is survived by his loving family; Gwen, Rachael, Jane, and Jack. His two brothers Tom (Karen) and Bryan (Suzy), his favourite mother-in-law Isabel Evans, and Gwen’s brothers (David, John, and Michael) and their families also mourn his loss, as do his dear lifelong friends. David was predeceased by his father Armond O. Erdmann, and mother Cynthia M. Erdmann.

David was drawn to Edmonton in 1976 from North Dakota, USA, and soon made Canada his home, as evidenced by his love of Canada Day and the infamous Erdmann Canada Day parties. As a musician and music educator, he instilled a love of music in his children. He was a founding member of the New Edmonton Wind Sinfonia, playing for over 30 years and making lifelong friends along the way. He had a wonderful life, was dearly loved and will be deeply missed.

A Celebration of Dave’s Life will be held Wednesday, June 15th at 7:00 pm at Convocation Hall, on the University of Alberta campus.

In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to the Pilgrim’s Hospice Society of Edmon-ton. Special thanks to Dr. Paul Humphries, the Norwood Hospice, and the staff at Pilgrim’s Hos-pice.

Family and Friends are encouraged to bring a photo and/or written Remembrance of David to be shared with the family and placed in the Memorial Book.