Happy Birthday to Our Traveling Companion

Two weeks ago, we took my paternal great-grandfather along on a college visit. It’s not the first time we’ve traveled with him. Over the past decade he’s accompanied us on several family vacations, ones that have a connection to places he once lived or places he himself once visited — like Havre, Montana, the Shiloh National Military Park in Tennessee, and the Minnesota towns of Bemidji and Crookston.

Lest you think we traveled with a man who would be 148 years old today, if he had not died in January 1946, I should clarify: this version of my great-grandfather does not require a cane or a wheelchair, does not order off the Perkins senior menu, and does not require his own airplane seat. He’s not a flesh and blood man. He’s a paper-thin, black and white photo reproduction, mounted on cardboard. He is the “Flat Stanley” of bandmasters, and he is a most agreeable companion.

Mini G returns to Oberlin, Ohio, in October 2018

The practice of taking G. Oliver Riggs along on trips started in 2008, a year after I began researching his life and career as a pioneering Minnesota band director. He was a prominent violin and cornet soloist at the turn of the last century, and he eventually specialized in forming and directing boys’ bands, in the days before public schools had music programs. Early in my research days, the museum in St. Cloud, Minnesota, where he directed the municipal band for 20 years, held a G. Oliver Riggs Day in his honor. For that special occasion, I created a 3-foot-tall cardboard cutout of my great-grandfather, blown up from a portrait of him wearing a tuxedo, taken in 1899 when he was about 30 years old.

G. Oliver Riggs with family at G. Oliver Riggs Day in 2008

The cardboard cutout was a hit with my extended Riggs family, and we included him in our group photos. We continued to take G. Oliver to other family and music-related events, and he began vacationing with my husband, my three kids and me, as I began working on a book about him. We eventually created a 9-inch-tall mini version, one that can easily fit inside a purse or laptop bag, for those situations when bringing along the larger version was impractical.

Mini G visits the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago in 2014

It’s the mini version that accompanied my husband, my youngest child, Elias, and me two weeks ago on a visit to Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, the school where my great-grandfather got his music education in the late 1880s and early 1890s.

G. Oliver was born on November 26, 1870, in Louisa County, Iowa, grew up on the plains of Nebraska and Kansas, and he learned to play instruments at a young age, likely inspired by his violin-playing father and accordion-playing mother. When he was 13, he decided he wanted to attend the celebrated music conservatory in Oberlin. He saved up his money, earned by herding cattle, and in the fall of 1885, shortly before he turned 15—three years younger than Elias is now—he took the train by himself from rural Kansas to Oberlin, with an overnight stop in Chicago. He took several courses over a period of terms, dropping out occasionally to earn more tuition money, and he finished his musical studies in the winter of 1891.

One hundred and thirty three years after G. Oliver first set foot on campus, Elias, his dad, and I flew from Minneapolis/St. Paul airport to Cleveland, rented a car, and drove 30 miles to Oberlin. Because the visit was about Elias checking out the school, and because I’d visited the campus once before, three years earlier with my older son, Sebastian (and Mini G), I did not feel compelled to make a big deal about G. Oliver’s return to campus. But I did sneak one photo of me with Mini G standing in front of the music conservatory building, built on the site of the old conservatory building where G. Oliver took lessons in piano, violin, and harmony.

I’m not sure if my great-grandfather would be flattered or weirded out to know that he continues to be our traveling companion, decades after he no longer walks the earth. I prefer to think the former. As for Mini G, I can report that he kept a proud smile on his face during the entire campus visit, even if his true thoughts remained inscrutable.

Mini G visits Bridge Square in Northfield, September 2018

Happy 148^th birthday, G. Oliver Riggs. May you enjoy many more musical family adventures with us in the coming decades.