Dr. Hubert Bird spent 30 years on the music faculty of the University System of New Hamphire, and has had a distinguished career as a composer, conductor, educator, and as a tenor soloist. Dr. Bird was born in Joplin, Missouri and grew up in nearby Baxter Springs, Kansas, where he now lives. Like the rest of the world, he was stunned by the devastation suffered by the city of Joplin in the May 22nd, 2011 EF-5 tornado. As he told me on the phone from his home last week, Dr. Bird went to Joplin to see just how bad it was. “I saw the devastation right after the tornado happened,” he said, then added a correction. “I should say, not right after, because I waited about ten days or so before I would go over there.” Shocked and stunned by what he saw, Dr. Bird told me he utterly “lost it.” When he returned home to Baxter Springs, he got in contact with an old friend, Colonel L. Bryan Shelburne, retired conductor of the United States Army Band in Washington, DC, and now living in Georgia. As
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