A trumpet player, he earned a bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree in music education from University of Texas at Austin, where he later became a teaching assistant and administrative assistant to the dean of the College of Fine Arts.
In 1964 he joined the music faculty of Del Mar College where he taught brass instruments for nine years.
[6] He served for seven years as chairman of the division of music at the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University from 1976 to 1983.
[1] In June 1983 he was hired as dean of the School of Music at the University of Miami and served in that capacity for 24 years until his own retirement in May 2007.
This was the largest gift to date to a university-based music school in the United States.