“Don’t worry, Mother,” said fifteen-year old Patrick Conway. “I’ll go
to work at the carriage factory and make some money for you.”
Patrick’s father, Martin Conway, had just died, leaving five children
and no money. There had never been much money in the Conway home and
Patrick had never known his father to be well. Martin Conway while
living in Ireland, had served in the British army and had been wounded
at Sebastopol during the Crimean War. In 1863 he had brought his wife
and baby girl to America, the land of his dreams. He proved his loyalty
to his new country by joining the Navy and fighting in the Civil War.
Tuberculosis developed and finally caused his death.
Patrick was born July 4, 1865 in Troy, New York. His life, even as a
child, was not a carefree one in this home where there was both poverty
and illness.
At the time of his father’s death Patrick was an honor student at Homer
Academy in Homer, New York, where the family had moved. He willingly
gave up his school work for a while in order to help the family. Three
of the children were ill with tuberculosis and died within a few years
after their father’s death.
Little did Patrick know that he would find his job at the carriage
factory a dual one. When Charlie Bates, one of the workers who led the
Homer Band learned of Patsy’s interest in the cornet, he said, “So you
would like to play the cornet? If you will come to my house after work
I’ll give you lessons.... Maybe you can be in the band some day.”
So Patrick worked all day learning the trade of carriage trimming, and
walked six miles every evening to take his lessons. But that never
seemed to tire him.
Later he joined the band and returned to school for part time work.
After he was graduated from Homer Academy at the age of eighteen, he
began playing with “Happy Bill Daniel’s Country Band Orchestra” where
he gained valuable experience. This proved to be the beginning of his
career as a bandsman.
But he needed money to help the family and to continue his studies in
music. As soon as he had accumulated enough cash he bought a small
cigar factory, which was soon a thriving little business. He left the
making of fine cigars and the management of the factory to his brother
Martin, so that he could devote his time to his music and study. He
enrolled at Ithaca Conservatory of Music and at Cornell University.
“Patsy” continued his band work along with his college work. While he
was playing for dances at the old Glen Haven Hotel, he met pretty Alice
Randall. He decided at once, “That is the girl I am going to marry.”
After their marriage they lived in Courtland, New York, where their son
Paul was born. Then they moved to Ithaca in 1895 when Patrick accepted
an offer to teach music at Cornell University. He organized the Cornell
Cadet Band and directed it for thirteen years.
Meantime about 1900, the city of Ithaca asked Patrick to start a city
band. With the financial backing of Ebenezer Treman, one of the civic
minded, wealthy merchants of the town, Patrick was able to bring some
of the finest musicians in the world to Ithaca. Some of these musicians
took their families and lived there, playing in the old Lyceum Theater
Orchestra during the winter season when the band was not on tour.
This band played in practically every music and amusement center in the
country. They went on many tours such as: the Buffalo Exposition; the
St. Louis World’s Fair; the Cincinnati Zoo; Riverview park, Chicago;
the Corn palace at Mitchell, South Dakota; and state fairs in the
western states.
About 1904 Patrick’s engagements at Willow Grove Park, a popular resort
near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and at Young’s Pier at Atlantic City,
New Jersey began. These continued for many years.
In 1908 Patrick took over the Ithaca Band and gave it the name,
“Patrick Conway and his Band.” People who had never heard of Ithaca
began to hear about the band which took prizes at concerts given in
various cities of the East. An old Ithacan used to reminisce, “Some
bands wouldn’t even enter if they knew ‘Patsy’ and his bunch of terrors
had.”
The next move was to Syracuse, New York. By that time Conway was making
transcontinental tours with fifty or sixty men in the band as well as a
dozen fine soloists.
In 1915 he played a long engagement at the Panama Pacific Exposition
in San Francisco. His friend Sousa was there at the same time, and on
one occasion they each conducted part of a great concert in which both
bands were massed.
In Syracuse during the winter months Conway organized and conducted the
Syracuse Symphony Orchestra as well as a theater orchestra. He also did
some composing but published only one march. His band made a number of
records for Victor.
During World War I Patrick Conway was commissioned as Captain in the U.
S. Army Air Force and sent to Waco, Texas to establish the first Air
Force Band. At the same time Sousa was starting the Navy Band at Great
Lakes Training Station.
Sorrow came into Patrick and Alice Conway’s lives when their son Paul
died at the age of twenty-six. Paul, a pianist of great promise, had
also played an instrument in his father’s band until his health failed
following an accident when he was eighteen.
The family moved back to Ithaca in 1922. Patrick was made dean of the
Conway Band School which was affiliated with the Ithaca Conservatory
of Music. During the school year he trained a remarkably fine student
band. He took a number of these boys with the big band on the summer
tours. How the boys worked for that privilege!
During the winter he went into New York to hear good music and to
broadcast on the General Motors Family Hour with Mary Garden, Nora
Bayes, and other celebrities. He organized and rehearsed amateur
symphony orchestras made up of business and professional men and women
in several small cities of New York.
Bandmaster Patrick Conway, like his Irish friends, Patrick Gilmore
and Victor Herbert, had two gifts often said to be peculiar to their
nationality--the gift of music and the gift of making friends. But
Patrick Conway had still another rare gift--that of inspiring his
students with his own ideals. Countless young men turned to musical
careers after finding a master teacher and a loyal friend in “Patsy” as
they affectionately called him.
Conway was a striking figure as he directed his boys in almost
faultless renditions of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Greig, Debussy and
other great composers. The simplicity that characterized him was
evident in his manner of conducting. He believed, “The conductor’s
motions are intended as signs and suggestions to his musicians--nothing
more. He doesn’t need to do a thing to entertain his audience. His
band is there for that purpose, and the more he devotes himself to
directing, the better the band will succeed in its purpose.”
A Conway band was equally at home with military selections and popular
music. No leader of that day knew better how to make programs that the
public wanted and yet make them like only the best.
If Conway had any leisure time, he knew what to do with it. Reading or
hiking with one of his dogs as a companion were popular pastimes. He
collected authentic stories about early days in the West.
His favorite sports were boxing and baseball. Each year at the opening
game at the New York Polo Grounds he took a small band to play for his
old friend, John J. (Muggsie) McGraw.
Patrick Conway died at Ithaca, June 10, 1929, at the height of his
usefulness. At the time of his death the _Ithaca Journal News_ paid the
following tribute: “It is no small thing to have gladdened the hearts
of the people, to have lifted them repeatedly above the mundane and
trivial, to have made them forget the heat of the working day in the
exaltation of good music. This was Patrick Conway’s contribution to his
time, and for it he has earned the heartfelt gratitude of more than
one generation. His own tradition of uncompromising musicianship, his
belief in offering the best to popular audiences will be carried on by
those who have learned from him.”