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Oklahoma State University

Serving the OSU Bands and Striving for the Highest Since 1919

History Snippets

Snippet #26 - "Boh Liked His Sports" by Otis Wile, taken from the Daily Oklahoman, June 13, 1950

Steve Nelson:  "The following article was lent to me by Paul Bourek, Boh's great grand-nephew.  It is interesting to note that when Boh passed away, even the sports pages recorded his passing."

BOH LIKED HIS SPORTS

By Otis Wile, Daily Oklahoman

 
Stillwater, June 13 - Strictly speaking this maybe isn’t a story for the sports section.  It is, however, if you are one who regards sports as something more important than yesterday’s box score or the tally from the golf course.  It has been noted in the press that Bohumil Makovsky, notable figure at Oklahoma A&M for 35 years, died early this week at Stillwater.

    As director of music at Aggieland, Boh cannot, of course, be classified strictly in an athletic category, But as a life-long confident of the late Edward Clark Gallagher, long-time athletic leader, and as a musical leader in that phase of athletic ceremony, the Bohemian-born Makovsky long was close to the sports scene in Stillwater.

    Elsewhere the press has related the facts of Makovsky’s interesting life.  Not formally educated, orphaned at 12, apprentice cigar-maker, off to join a traveling wagon show as a youth in Nebraska, organizer of a band at the Delmar Gardens in Oklahoma City in 1903, and later to be named to Oklahoma’s hall of fame, to found Kappa Kappa Psi, national band fraternity, and to achieve the top honors of Masonry…All that has been duly related.

    Someone should relate one or two of the innumerable Makovsky legends, the stories fondly told about the famed director and composer who handled his band like the toughest martinet of a football coach.  If they could build character on the athletic field, Boh always told Ed Gallagher, he could build it in the band.  Tough, and beloved.  That’s how Makovsky coached.  He’d crack their head – but he’d fight for them.

    Like the time Boh got an order from the president’s office to turn out the band for a visit of the state board of agriculture and the governor back in the 1920’s.  The band had played a football game Saturday.  This was Monday.  Boh, who never spoke better than very broken English, stormed into the college president’s office.  "Who ordered the band to play?" he demanded, "Every time automobile run over tail of dog, you want for band to play.  The band will not turn out today.  Board of agriculture, governor, bah."  The band she did not play that day.

    No football fan in Oklahoma but can tell you that the classical strains of A&M football music ain’t football music.  Boh abhorred jazz and what he thought of later boogie we cannot here set forth.

    The Aggie band was made up of musicians, directed by musicians, all during Boh’s regime.  Delmar Gardens, the state fair band, the A&M band.  They all played music.  There was no ham in Aggieland.  If it sounded like a dirge between halves, mate, then you knew more football than you knew music.  Boh said so.  So it was so.  The band she will not play idle noise just because SMU plays "Purina" and OU burdens the ear with a cacophonous rendition of Yale’s "Boola, Boola".  The muse forbid.

    So Aggies finally came to love it.  If A&M was going to be different, by Boh’s baton, then A&M was going to be classical – between halves or after touchdowns.

    We said Boh could be tough.  The very best story of all is told now and then by Henry Iba’s assistant athletic director, Harry Dolman, no mean man on the sarrusophone in his day with Boh’s band, and no mean story-teller either, by the way.  Harry delights in telling of the time the band was on tour, back in the ‘30s, and left Shawnee for Edmond, where it was to appear at Central State.  The bus drew into Edmond and Dolman discovered to his dismay that he had somehow left his sarrusophone in Shawnee.

    Dolman approached Boh.  "Don’t know how it happened, can’t imagine, thought I had loaded it, shall I sit in my chair or just wait out in the wing?" he asked director Makovsky.  "Harry," said Boh, "we all make mistake, but we want to have a good showing, we want big band.  You sit in your chair.  President Bennett is here.  We make good showing."

    So the band tootled a couple of pieces as Dolman sat stiffly in his chair, instrumentless.  Then, Harry relates, Boh tapped on the music rack and faced the audience.

    "We have," he said, "most promising musician.  Young man of fine talent is member of A&M band." (Dolman figured Boh was about to introduce Oakley Pittman for a clarinet solo, or Louis Malkus, another star.)  Boh continued:  "Harry stand up.  This young man came all the way to your pretty city for concert.  He becomes example for all.  FOR HE FORGOT TO BRING HIS SARRUSOPHONE!  VAT DID YOUR COME FOR, HARRY, THE RIDE?"

    Yes, Boh could have delivered a half-time talk to the team had he coached football.  And he would have made his point.  A grand personality, another beloved link with the past of A&M that is broken, but now can become a part of the legendary story of Aggieland.