It was the culminating year of our grand plan to complete doctoral study and have the Doctor of Music Education (DME) in hand by August 19, 1959. And the plan worked very well. I would have enough G.I. bill eligibility to see us through all but the final 10 days; it reimbursed me $160 per month. Plus, I had a teaching assistantship (TA) for graduate students, which gave me in-state tuition plus a month stipend of $100. Those two sources of income, along with money we had saved, was sufficient to see us through the year. I would have to go back to work somewhere in the Fall of 1959, so I was determined to complete my requirements on schedule.

One of the complications was that I had developed a duodenal ulcer during our final years in Brighton. The doctor in Bloomington informed me that I was "the father of a brand new baby ulcer!" I was NOT pleased with that announcement, but Dr. Lindblad assured me he could take care of it. I went on a strict diet of liquid Sustagin for six weeks to get the ulcer under control; after that, I just had to be careful not to eat anything irritating. I lost weight, but that in itself wasn’t such a bad idea.

Then in July or so, Katherine got the brilliant idea we should have our third child in Hoosier Courts so she would not have to be "PG" (in those days, the word "pregnant" had to be used discreetly) when we were trying to get started on our post-doctoral career. I agreed, with very little argument. After all, she would endure the major hardship in this production.

And so came the second complication in our grand plan when in early March Katherine began some bleeding. The obstetrician required her to "stay in the prone" as much as possible, which she did. Davey, Susan and I took care of her and ourselves over the next few weeks.

Timothy Christian arrived on schedule on April 29, 1959. Actually, he was little behind schedule; we had hoped he would make his appearance on April 26 so he could share a birth date with his two siblings (Dave in 1950 and Susan in 1953). But NOOO! He demonstrated his independence early in life when he insisted on emitting his first scream 3 days later.

The birthing itself was without major incident. Kathleen Lauerman, our next door neighbor on the second floor of Hoosier Courts, was our delivery nurse. She was the first to report that we had delivered a fine little baby boy and that "he has the BIGGEST MOUTH I’ve ever seen on a baby!" (Kathleen’s line gave us plenty of teasing ammunition in later years.)

I had completed my qualifying exams, both written and oral, in September of ’58, so the course work had been completed. Most of my time was spent writing the dissertation. Dean Wilford Bain, who had awarded me the assistantship, had given me a room at the university to work; so most of my days and nights were spent reading and re-reading; writing and re-writing; and consulting with Dr. Jack Watson, my major professor, and Dr. Mueller, my minor professor in the counseling department.

I thought I’d have a "professional" type my final dissertation copies (four were required), but after she had typed one chapter so poorly, I decided to do it myself. I used the old mechanical typewriter we had acquired in Brighton. Never before or since have I developed calluses on all eight finger-tips, but there they were. Thankfully, I was quite a speedy typist.

Electric typewriters had not yet been invented, nor had Xerox machines. Mountains of typing paper and carbon sheets were stacked in my private room. I had to produce one original and three carbon copies of the work, each to be bound separately and signed by my doctoral committee of six faculty members. Can you imagine what happened when I typed an error? I not only had to erase and correct the original but also all the copies. Ouch! Occasionally I would make an irreparable mistake and had to throw away the entire set of pages. It became good therapy for me to place the waste basket way across the room, then take each of the ruined pages, crumple it into a ball and try to "make the basket" in the far corner. Some evenings I got more exercise than I wanted!

In early June of 1959, I successfully defended my written project. My "other baby" had been born, and I was cleared for graduation in August.

The idea for my research project had come from Leo Christy, a friend and fellow doctoral student at Indiana University. His research and writing were nearly complete, and his final page included a section entitled "Recommendations for Further Research." One of his recommendations was to examine the clarify just why students dropped out of music study at IU. My major advisor thought the topic would be a good one for me, and Dean Bain really wanted to know the answers to that question. And so the title of my dissertation became, "A Study of the Causes for Withdrawal of Undergraduate Music Students."

The project involved questionnaires and many interviews. I would send a questionnaire from our home in Brighton to each student who did not return for the following semester. Ruth Norton, Music School Secretary, would send me names and addresses as soon as the "dropout" was confirmed. We performed that task for four regular semesters during the years 1955-1957. Back on campus during the summers, I would interview private instructors and collect their opinions about why the dropout withdrew. Academic records were also recorded for each student. The process of documenting and verifying reasons for withdrawal were quite involved.

It stay interesting, however, because occasionally a faculty member would resist talking about a former student. Some instructors thought the Dean was "spying" on them, hoping to find a reason to fire them. In those cases, I would be summarily dismissed from the faculty studio. Most faculty were cooperative.

Ultimately, I was able to present in my report the ten predominant causes for student withdrawal. Usually the decision was based on more than one cause, but reasons were primarily (1) academic failure, (2) financial insufficiency, or (3) a change in the student’s life aims and goals.

Katherine and I enjoyed many concerts on campus the year we were in residence. Especially memorable was Wagner’s Parsifal, which started at 2:00 p.m. and ended at about 10:00 p.m., with a break for supper from 5:30 to 7:00. Glorious music! . . . that went on and on! . . . Another fine musical experience was seeing and hearing "Most Happy Fellow" starring our faculty friend and the director of our church choir, Ralph Appleman, as the "Fellow." Puccini’s Tosca was so good it nearly made an opera-lover of me. Our tenor friend, Bill ???, sang the role of Cavaradossi very convincingly.

All in all, I would pronounce our year of residency as being very successful. I did not stay for the graduation ceremony on August 25, but the Graduate School sent me their doctoral "hood" which I wore proudly to commencement exercises for many years as a faculty member.