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Hall Of Fame Members

(L) - Life Member of CHSAA
(P) - Inducted Posthumously
(D) - Deceased

Larkin Bernard

 

 

 


Bernard P.  Larkin      

CHS Class of 1924


 

CHS ’24 Class Vice-President, Baseball (Captain 4), Drama Club

New England Conservatory of Music Specialized in Harmony ‘40

Career
Played Clarinet, Saxophone, Flute, Oboe plus most other band instruments; Venues: Coconut Grove, Boston, MA, Immaculate Conception Church Parish Hall, Area behind The Memorial Auditorium, Lowell, MA Friday nights for High School students; Professional Music Teacher (Private Lessons); Immaculate Conception Church Choir (Director), Lowell Textile Institute Band (Director), Community Band Director (Westford & Chelmsford); Chelmsford, MA Public Schools Chelmsford High School (Music Teacher & Bandmaster) Created first CHS Band in 1943, 25 members strong, Bernie composed & arranged the Chelmsford High School Fight Song 

Community
Started the Middlesex Training School Band, Initiated the Town of Chelmsford Band—Directed numerous summer concerts, Christmas concerts with CHS band at homes of elderly shut-ins, St. John’s Senior Choir, St. Vincent De Paul Society (President) 

1944 Yearbook Quote:
“It all began one morning at assembly, as we trailed in listless and disorderly fashion toward the auditorium. Suddenly music met our ears. The effect was instantaneous. We picked up our feet, straightened our shoulders and looked around in astonishment. What could be happening? There at the front of the hall, bright and gay, with the incomparable Miss MacBrayne swinging her baton, was our own Chelmsford High School Band, making its first unannounced appearance. At this crucial point, Bernie Larkin, bubbling with pep and optimism, burst upon the scene. From this moment on we were band conscious.”

1952 Yearbook “In Memoriam” page:
“Boys and girls flocked to the Chelmsford High School band room not alone for the inspiration of music, but even more for the inspiration in the heart of the Bandmaster. No trouble was too small, no dream too big, no demand too exhausting for his sympathy and understanding. This man made life, as well as music, an art. He enriched everyday materials and ordinary experiences with the sense of life’s true and universal values, and these values he imparted freely. Bernie gave lessons in music and at the same time lessons in living. He taught what he himself was—simplicity and morality, generosity and godliness, tolerance and the love of the beautiful, devotion to church and charity to the poor, but perhaps more than all else, in all things, he taught joy. His smile was expansive, his voice hearty, and his whole life the creative expression of joyous fellowship. He loved people, old and young, rich and poor, fortunate and unfortunate, his family, his friends, his fellow workers, and his pupils. And because he loved, as he did everything else, with zest and exhilaration, so he was loved in return. What Bernie gave cannot be overestimated, and in the lives of the hundreds of young people who have passed under his tutelage he is immortalized.”