An Obituary

I’m sitting at my mom’s kitchen table, sitting in my dad’s chair, drinking my dad’s crappy coffee from his coffee cup thinking about how I’m now the patriarch of this branch of the Galstad family – and then chastising myself for thinking the literally most patriarchal thoughts a person can have in 2021. And none of this changes the fact that my dad is gone. Stanton Orlin Galstad died earlier this week. And as much as the reality of it all has set in as I drove across the country, and have spent the last 4 days helping my sisters and my mom rearrange their daily lives and settle his affairs… well it hasn’t fully set, yet. So I’m doing what helps me the most when I need to process extremely painful and personal issues: I write to the world – and in this case to all the people that knew my dad. So please read my catharsis, and share in remembering all the joy and wonder that was Stan Galstad. 

Music. It started with the music and that’s probably what most of you remember him for. Whether directing church choir, community band, high school band, or any number of musical acts of service he performed, it was always the music. We never had a lot of material possessions when I was a kid – less charitably I will joke that we didn’t live in the trailer park but we lived next to it – but we always had access to musical instruments. And when my dad and my mom were hustling their asses off to keep us in the house and keep us fed, and maybe give us a little more comfortable life my dad used those musical instruments to put food on the table. Our little house was filled with the sounds of students of all instruments getting private lessons from my dad. Trumpets, Oboes, Clarinets, Piano, Flutes… basically my dad taught any instrument that didn’t involve strings or percussion from the living room of our house. This was in addition to the morning paper route he ran with me, the factory jobs that destroyed his shoulder, all of his community and church musical exploits, attending school into his 40’s, tuning pianos on the side, and a whole host of other jobs. And it all came back to the music for as long as I can remember. Achieving his teaching license and becoming a public school music teacher was one of his highest personal achievements. I joke about the fact that it took me 14 years to get my bachelors degree and I just realized that he beat me by ten years at the resilience game. 

 My dad finally got his first real teaching job in Sleepy Eye, MN and that school did not know what hit it. My dad on podium in Sleepy Eye was a combination of Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society, and Robin Williams in Aladdin. He accepted no excuses, he tolerated no shenanigans, and he cared about music and your musical talent more than anyone else ever could or would. He took a 23-member band that couldn’t play their own school song or the National Anthem, and in three years had that same school band showcased at the State music convention. He challenged the students from a sports-centric farm school to care enough and work hard enough to not just succeed, but to excel and to take their musical talents out into the community. And he was passionately hilarious. Sweetness and light that man said and did some crazy things to try to communicate his musical vision. Between the dancing, the voices, the flailing, the nearly tearful pleading, but never the swearing (you were always better than me, dad) he was a human dynamo. He was the 90’s era musical equivalent of the Honey Badger. Every note I have gotten about condolences from my Sleepy Eye friends talks about my Dad and the joy he brought during band. 

 He was just as passionate a father as a teacher, he just expressed it differently. He cared about us kids so much, and yet he never wanted to push us in a direction we didn’t want to go. So he was quiet to the point of annoyance when asked about what or how we should approach our futures. This was his love language. On the flip side he had one of the most childishly glorious senses of humor and I credit him with my inability to let an inadvertent double entendre slip by without snorting. Dad, you have no idea how much trouble you’ve caused me when working with older “more mature” people. And then there was his faith. 

 My Dad’s faith is my example. The understated expression of service to others was his form of evangelism. He couldn’t verbally express the love of God very well, and discussing the merits of Christianity mostly left him talking in circles or just sitting there quietly. But you knew he loved Jesus by his actions and the way he treated people. The way he taught with passion and the way he pierce all of the roadblocks for success and reach the inner understanding of almost anyone. When he taught, and when he talked, you knew you were the most important person to him at that moment. He was the living embodiment of a parable – to the point that I am only now starting to see what he was doing years ago. 

 My dad is gone, and he left a legacy I am proud of. I can only hope to have my kids and the people I’ve touched speak the same way of me when I am gone. I love you dad. Thanks.