Hayes’ Hurley aims to help others through music

Melissa Hur­ley

Story and photo by

LIZ ROBERTSON

Senior year hasn’t hit Melissa Hur­ley yet. It is some­thing the Hayes High School senior said she is thank­ful for as she does not want to slack off.

But senior year has already seen the clo­sure of some things for Melissa — march­ing band sea­son is over as is bowl­ing sea­son. Though there are ample music oppor­tu­ni­ties yet in the remain­der of the school year that Melissa will be involved in. There is pit to play in for the upcom­ing musi­cal, “Legally Blonde,” and also state and dis­trict con­tests for orches­tra where she plays trum­pet, and con­cert band where she plays French horn. Melissa also plays trum­pet in jazz band, so there are lots of prac­tices in her schedule.

She began her music career with the viola in the fourth grade. In the fifth grade, she began play­ing the French horn, but not because she wanted to. Melissa wanted to play the alto sax but was told her fin­gers were not long enough. She had con­cerns about the French horn as she was told it was dif­fi­cult to play and required prac­tic­ing two hours a day.

Yet eight years later, she still plays the instru­ment. She has also had two and a half years on the viola, is in her first year on trum­pet and played the mel­lophone all four years in march­ing band.

Hayes band teacher Rolf Rem­linger said besides Melissa’s per­form­ing in school groups, she also par­tic­i­pates in solo and ensem­ble con­test “chal­leng­ing her­self with class ‘A’ pieces the last two years.”

Melissa has the ded­i­ca­tion and com­mit­ment to suc­ceed at all lev­els, he said.

“Melissa is one of the nicest, most depend­able stu­dents I have ever had in the band pro­gram. This also trans­fers to every­thing she does with Girl Scouts, 4-H, bowl­ing, orches­tra, pit orches­tra, hon­ors bands, solo and ensem­ble, home­com­ing and Tri-M, to name just a few,” he said.

Rem­linger said Melissa is very involved. “She vol­un­teers and works with numer­ous orga­ni­za­tions giv­ing of her time and abil­ity unselfishly. She has taken lead­er­ship train­ing (George Parks Drum Major Acad­emy) to help the march­ing band, on her own time in the sum­mer. Melissa reg­u­larly works with the younger stu­dents to help them in and out­side the band set­ting. ‘Depend­able’ would be a word that I would use to describe Melissa as would all her teach­ers, coaches, lead­ers and adults that have worked with her.”

Not sur­pris­ingly, Melissa sees music in her future as well.

It was just last year when the idea came to her from a close fam­ily friend who is affil­i­ated with a devel­op­men­tal dis­abil­ity school. The friend was talk­ing about a music ther­apy posi­tion. Melissa real­ized this would be the per­fect direc­tion for her: She could tie her love of music in with help­ing others.

There are four schools that offer music ther­apy pro­grams; Melissa has nar­rowed those down to two — the Uni­ver­sity of Day­ton and Ohio Uni­ver­sity. She has been accepted into both schools and is now in the audi­tion process to be accepted into the music depart­ments. Her final deci­sion, she said, will depend on the schol­ar­ships offered.

Melissa said she will prob­a­bly pur­sue this area as she likes to work with chil­dren, which is evi­dent from her work with Big Brother Big Sis­ter, Girl Scouts and 4-H.

She began Girl Scouts in the first grade and over the years has earned the Bronze, Sil­ver (for start­ing a Daisy Troop) and Gold (to raise aware­ness for the Pilot Dog pro­gram) awards. She is also a Girl Scout COSI volunteer.

More recently, Melissa began work­ing with Big Brother Big Sister

“It’s fun to work with the younger kids at the school SAC pro­gram,” she said.

Melissa also fos­ters pup­pies for the humane soci­ety. She has the pup­pies for two-week peri­ods for socializing.

“I still remem­ber our first fos­ter, Molly. She was gan­gly; I think she was a Great Dane mix. She would howl at night,” Melissa said, smil­ing at the memory.

Melissa is also very involved in 4-H. She facil­i­tates the CARTEENS pro­gram once a month on Sat­ur­days. She also helps with the 4-H aware­ness team which vis­its area ele­men­tary schools to meet with younger stu­dents and dis­cuss the 4-H pro­gram and has been a 4-H camp coun­selor for the past four years. Melissa also went to Wash­ing­ton, D.C., as a del­e­gate for Cit­i­zen­ship Wash­ing­ton Focus and has been on the junior fair board for the past three years.

Since her sec­ond year in 4-H, she has shown her dog, Mur­phy the poo­dle, com­pet­ing last year in Show­man of Show­men with him.

“He’s a prissy poo­dle. He does not fully sit because he hates get­ting dirty,” Melissa said with a laugh.

Among her other projects has been nutri­tion, small ani­mals, horses, weld­ing and shooting.

Laryssa Hook, exten­sion edu­ca­tor with 4-H and Youth Devel­op­ment, said “Melissa has a real pas­sion for teach­ing and help­ing oth­ers. Through her 4-H involve­ment, I’ve seen this most as she has raised pilot dogs and in her role as a 4-H camp coun­selor. Whether she is in the mid­dle of a creek and teach­ing campers about stream study or help­ing a younger mem­ber learn to train their dog, she demon­strates a sin­cere want to help oth­ers learn. Even with her many involve­ments in school, Girl Scouts and 4-H, she ded­i­cates her time to doing things that mat­ter. The com­mu­nity is a much bet­ter place because of the many dif­fer­ence ser­vice projects she has been a part of.”

Melissa offers the fol­low­ing advice to others.

“Be involved. Don’t sit out think­ing I can’t do it,” she said, adding, “Don’t pro­cras­ti­nate. As you go through the years, it is harder to get work turned in. Have fun.”

And for those fresh­man con­sid­er­ing march­ing band, she said, “Def­i­nitely be in it. You make friends at band camp, so you have friends already when school starts. You will have a whole com­mu­nity, a fam­ily of friends in your fresh­man year.”

Melissa is the daugh­ter of Leigh Betts-Hurley of Delaware and Ted Hur­ley of London.

Posted by Liz Robertson on Mar 2 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.