Remembering Donald Braun

Donald Braun was director of the Floresville High School Band in the 1980s. He passed away Nov. 2. Former students recall him with great fondness. COURTESY/Dawn Norment

Donald Braun was many things — educator, administrator, family man, painter, choir singer, cook, and fisherman. But to many people around Floresville, Braun, who passed away Nov. 2, is best remembered as the director of the Mighty Tiger Band.

Braun earned his music degree at Texas Lutheran University, according to his son Nathan. He first served as a band director at Navarro High School in Seguin before joining the Floresville Independent School District.

“He was an amazing man, and those were wonderful years,” said former student Leslie Sitz Stapleton, a 1986 graduate of Floresville High School.

Braun was her band director for her last year of junior high school, as well as for her first three years of high school. Stapleton started out playing clarinet, but later switched to playing alto saxophone.

“He worked so hard with us,” Stapleton said, recalling him running up and down the formation with a megaphone when the band practiced on the school football field.

“He also drove one of the school buses with part of the band to take us to events,” she continued. “It was a big band for a school our size.”

She credits Braun with being “a good listener” and developing a “spirit of family” in the band.

“Everybody was close,” she said. “Everyone had each other’s back. Mr. Braun — we called him ‘Barney’ with all love — was a leader in that.”

The band’s hard work and cohesiveness apparently paid off in competition with other bands.

Going to State

“He took us to State three years in a row,” said Dawn Norment, another former student, who graduated a year before Stapleton. “We were not in the finals, but just to go [to the state competitions] was an honor in itself.”

Braun was band director for the junior high school band when Norment was in seventh and eighth grades. Consequently, he was her band director for both junior high school and high school.

In her sophomore year, she remembers Braun out on the field with the band during marching practice.

“He had had triple bypass heart surgery the summer before school started,” she said. “His wife arrived and was all over him to get him to slow down.”

After Norment’s junior year, Braun became the high school’s vice principal, and she didn’t stay in band for her senior year.

“Band just wasn’t as much fun without him,” she said. “The band went to State that year, too, but I still attribute that to Mr. Braun.”

Norment, who went on to teach school after college, said Braun was ahead of his time.

Building relationships

“Now the big thing in education is building relationships,” she said. “But he built us into a band family back then.”

One example of relationship building stands out. During her senior year, Norment went to the vice principal’s office to talk with Braun.

“I still felt like he was a friend,” she said. “I asked him to find out if a student who assisted him had a date for the prom. If he didn’t, I asked Mr. Braun to mention to the student that I would go with him if he asked me.”

The student, Michael Coldewey, did ask Norment out, and romance blossomed from there.

“We went to college together, married, and had three girls,” she said. “Mr. Braun came to our wedding.”

When Michael Coldewey passed away in 2008, she received a phone call from Braun.

“That really meant a lot to me,” said Norment, who later remarried. “As a teacher, you want to make a difference in someone’s life. Mr. Braun really made a difference in my life.”

Jerry Hogue, who succeeded Braun as director of the junior high school band and assisted with the high school band, remembers Braun as “a really good partner.”

“We enjoyed working with each other,” he said.

He recalled the last time the two of them were at the state band competition in the stadium of the University of Texas at Austin.

“I really thought we’d take first spot,” Hogue said. “Unfortunately, the band was a bridesmaid and not a bride, but we were glad to be at the wedding.”

Hogue noted that Braun, who played the trumpet, was a fine musician in his own right. Both men played in various community bands together for a number of years. However, while Braun directed the high school band, he focused on that job.

“He wrote the half-time shows,” Hogue said. “And he had a good way with kids.”

A family of teachers

Braun’s two sons, Nathan and his younger brother, Carl, were among his band students.

“It was good at times and bad at times, being the band director’s son,” Nathan said. “But he didn’t treat us any different from any other student.”

Nathan followed his father into teaching, which was no surprise, as he came from a family of teachers.

“Dad’s father was a teacher and a principal, his mother was a principal, his sisters were teachers, and his brother was a head coach,” said Nathan, a history teacher and football coach at MacArthur High School in San Antonio. “I never imagined doing anything else.”

The chip off the old block remembers his father bringing his work home with him.

“He would draw up band routines and have paper spread out all over the living room,” he said. “He loved his job.”

After Donald Braun had to leave band-directing behind, he served as Floresville High School vice principal for a couple of years and as Poth High School principal for a few more. He then went to work for Texas Education Service Center, Region 20, as a computer troubleshooter before finally retiring.

“He enjoyed his career, but he was super proud of being the grandfather of five children and the great-grandfather of one,” his son said. “His favorite title was ‘Pa.’”

Memorializing Donald Braun

Former students and associates of Donald Braun offer two organizations to which people can send donations as tributes to the beloved band director:

•The Mighty Tiger Band, ATTN: Linnci Angle, 1200 Fifth St., Floresville, TX 78114

•The “County Line Community Band,” 150 E. Loop 1604 South, Lot 2, Adkins, TX 78101.

gripps@wcn-online.com