Maestro immortalized at Scottsdale's Coronado High School

Scottsdale’s “Music Man” may be gone, but his name will live on set on the side of Coronado High School’s new auditorium. The Scottsdale Unified School District formally approved naming the building after Eugene L. Hanson, Coronado’s original band and orchestra director, earlier this month.

AUDIO SLIDESHOW: See narrated photographs of the new Coronado High School auditorium

Irma Griffin, current Coronado fine arts department chairwoman and a former student of Hanson’s, was obviously thrilled by the approval: She pumped her fists in the air and yelled, “Yeah!” after the vote came down at the Nov. 13 meeting.

“(Hanson) demanded excellence. He pushed us and so many past the point where you thought you could go. And I think that’s what made him so special and so different,” Griffin said last week. “And then he instilled that leadership in the staff ... he was something else.”

Hanson began his career as an educator in Missouri, but took a break from teaching as World War II started.

After serving as a musician in the U.S. Navy, Hanson moved to Arizona in 1946. His first position was as a band director at Peoria High School.

He moved to the Scottsdale Unified School District in 1950 and never left. He was first director of bands at Scottsdale High School, but was tapped to be Coronado’s first band and orchestra director when that school opened in 1961.

He stayed at Coronado until retiring in 1982. Over that time, he wrote the school’s hymn and fight song; created the Donettes, a dance group known for their twirling capes; and helped design Coronado’s original auditorium.

He was also the first band director to lead high schools in the Parada del Sol, wrote the song, “I Want to be a Cowboy Out in the West” for the Parada and helped form Arizona’s All-State music festival and the state’s first school directors’ associations.

He retired in 1982 after teaching 39 years, 32 of them spent in the Scottsdale school district. He died of cancer in 2001 one day after his 80th birthday.

Hanson’s family is honored to have his name on the side of the auditorium and thinks Hanson would be honored as well, said daughter Becky Hanson Cole.

Cole, also a Coronado alumna, said her father was proud of the work he did at Coronado and had quite a following from his students.

“He just always helped them see that they could achieve a lot,” Cole said. “Even though he was very strict and demanded a lot of everyone, a lot of people felt that was good for camaraderie,” she said.

Putting Hanson’s name on the auditorium will also help keep some of the school’s history alive, said Robert Swierski, who runs Coronado’s alumni newsletter and led the push to name the auditorium after Hanson.

“Back in the ’60s and ’70s, the Valley didn’t have the venues that they have now. The fine arts programs at Scottsdale High, Coronado High, Arcadia ... were really well developed,” Swierski said. “The orchestra, the band, the musicals, the theatrical performances — those were really highly regarded as valuable entertainment. That’s just not true now.”

Swierski said he hopes this is just the beginning of efforts by alumni to educate current students and faculty members about Scottsdale’s history.

“A few of us are trying to bring the history to the forefront,” he said.

And a lot of alumni support at least the effort to name the auditorium after Hanson. Swierski said former students sent at least 100 e-mails endorsing the move.

A lot of those e-mails said the same thing: That Hanson’s lessons stuck with them well beyond high school, Griffin said.

Including one that stood out to Griffin, which read, “I am 60 years old and I still see him waving that baton and expecting our attention.”

In a way it was tough deciding to put Hanson’s name on the auditorium because all the original fine arts teachers at Coronado were highly regarded: drama teacher Jim Newcomer, choral director Robert Frazier and art teacher Joe Gatti, who designed the mosaic for the Coronado auditorium, Griffin said.

But in the end, it had to be Hanson, the department chairman for the school’s first 20 years, who had to get the honor.

“He really was the glue that kept it all together,” Griffin said. “And it was his foresight that saw something in these guys to hire them.”

But the other teachers won’t be forgotten — there are plans to include all their portraits and short biographies in the new auditorium’s lobby, Griffin said.

Hanson’s name isn’t on the building yet — Coronado has to raise $3,000 for the letters and the building’s not quite finished — but it should be there by the time the auditorium is dedicated in February or March, Griffin said.