Jerry Moore

This is a blog, which means I have permission to write about anything I want. I want to write about Jerry Moore, and I don’t know why.

I met Jerry Moore when my family moved to Cedar Rapids. We were in the fifth grade together. We had the same home room teacher from the fifth grade through our senior year in high school. We shared a locker all three years in high school. I only remember one class we had in common, and that was orchestra. In spite of these regular intersections with Jerry, I did not know him well.

The thing that always intrigued me about Jerry is how different his life was from mine. Jerry lived with his mom who taught music lessons out of her house. He lived in a modest house across the street from our elementary school. Jerry’s instrument was the violin. He had an older brother who played the cello. In the eight years of elementary, middle, and high school that I knew Jerry, I never saw him playing games or having fun like the rest of us.

While the rest of us would gather after school and weekends for pick-up baseball, basketball, and football games, it was rumored that Jerry spent hours in his house practicing the violin. This was whispered about as if it were a nefarious activity; not as bad as being a communist, but clearly abnormal behavior. I never saw him having fun. He never went out for a sport. I never saw him anywhere but at school, and didn’t know anyone who had seen him out and about either.

I understood and enjoyed music. I could read music, and make music, with my voice; I just couldn’t do it well with an instrument. I’d been taking cello lessons since the third grade. I did not enjoy it, but I did it because my parents made me. Proper playing of the cello required me to contort my hand and fingers in a painful fashion I could never master. I could read the music, but translating it to finger movement never came naturally. Holding the bow properly also required a painful contortion of the right hand. I could make some sounds come out of the cello, but nothing I would be proud for others to hear.

My experience with the cello gave me some appreciation for Jerry’s well hidden pursuit of the violin. My appreciation for Jerry’s pursuit changed considerably in the ninth grade.

Our junior high school covered grades 7-9. Several times a year there would be an all-school assembly where there would be a special speaker. They would pack the entire school into the auditorium for these events. They brought in a man with a menagerie of reptiles to exhibit and talk about their biological features. One time it was a man exhibiting birds of prey. Another time it was a man who could play multiple instruments.

The school called an unannounced assembly, and I thought this was quite odd. Usually an assembly was promoted weeks in advance to generate excitement and interest in the subject. I remember walking into the auditorium and seeing Jerry sitting in a plain wooden chair onstage. There was nothing on the stage; only Jerry. I remember thinking, “Oh crap, Jerry has done something really bad and they are going to make a public example of him in front of the whole school”!

When the school was finally seated quietly, one of the school administrators proceeded to interview Jerry. Through the interview we learned that Jerry got up early every morning to practice the violin for two hours before school started. We learned that Jerry went home in the afternoons and practiced for several more hours. We heard about the junior honor orchestra he played in with other select young musicians. He had won several prestigious honors and awards that we didn’t even know existed. I am not sure of this, but I think he was also already playing with the Cedar Rapids Symphony, which was no small feat. It turned out that Jerry pursued the violin with greater dedication and discipline than any athlete we knew. Jerry was quietly better at his pursuit than any of us at ours.

At the conclusion of the interview Jerry picked up his violin which was waiting offstage, tuned it expertly, and began to play. He played so beautifully that I was touched, and I cried. I cry now just thinking about the moment. I don’t recall what he played, just that it flowed and soared and resonated in that ancient auditorium. No one made a sound. A school full of self-centered adolescents actually wanted to hear every note. Jerry had a gift, a gift he had developed to the fullest, and shared it with the school. At that moment Jerry had the respect of everyone in that school.

When Jerry finished the piece I popped to my feet to begin the standing ovation. If I didn’t, I should have. Someone did. The auditorium roared with approval. I could practice the cello for a thousand years and never make the kind of music Jerry did that day. He had a gift.

I was proud to share a locker with Jerry Moore the next three years of high school. I always asked him how the violin was going. He always asked me about cross country, wrestling and track. He was a good guy. He was different.

I came across Jerry again one day in 1974 during my senior year at Coe College. I was walking across campus one evening near Sinclair Auditorium and Jerry was standing at the stage door. The Cedar Rapids Symphony had a concert there that night. I hadn’t seen him for 4 years since we graduated from high school, so we exchanged greetings and briefly got caught up on each other’s lives. I naively asked him why he was in Cedar Rapids and not in Chicago or New York with one of the major symphonies. Jerry thanked me for the compliment, but patiently explained to me that there existed yet another stratum of gifted musicians above him. It was hard to believe.

Jerry was as good as any violinist I’ve heard over the years, and I have heard a fair number. To hear him play in person defied description. For him to say that there were better violinists was unbelievable to me, but Jerry insisted that the difference was there. It was yet another humbling moment to realize that not only can I not make music like Jerry Moore; I also cannot hear music like Jerry Moore.

Jerry, you da man