For 17 years, Fulton Doty was AUHS's Music Man

Fulton Doty, who turns 88 today, Sept. 2, started teaching band, orchestra and general science at Anderson Union High School in 1952.

“I was teaching band and choir at Hamilton City High School at the time, when I heard that Anderson needed an instrumental music teacher. I came up here for an interview during the summer, and I found the principal, Robert Peckler, out planting a lawn in front of a new building,” the still-spry Doty remembers.

A 1939 graduate of Colton High School in southern California, just south of San Bernardino, Doty decided while still a sophomore in high school that he wanted to pursue a career in music education.

“I told my teacher, Miss Brooks, and she was very enthusiastic. She told me, ‘Doty, there’s no time like the present. Go buy yourself a trumpet and start learning the other instruments.’ I did buy my first trumpet for $15 out of the Sears-Roebuck catalogue. It was brass and made in Czechoslovakia,” Doty remembered.

He went on to also master the piano, saxophone, clarinet and baritone horn. After graduating high school in post-Depression 1939, because there were few other jobs available, Doty opted to take post-graduate classes in high school chemistry and typing. His schedule also allowed him to sign up for beginning orchestra, which Miss Brooks then allowed Doty to teach as her assistant. Doty eventually pursued higher education at Chaffee Junior College in Rancho Cucamonga, California, a school that enjoyed a reputation for having the best music department in the state at that time, he recalled.

After the United States entered into World War II, Doty was interested in serving his country, but on his own terms. He joined the musicians’ union in Hollywood and, in May 1942, was drafted into the Army Air Corps Band.

“During the war, I spent time in Chico where I met my eventual wife, Betty, who was working as a secretary for a business,” Doty said.

Fulton and Betty married Nov. 4, 1944, while he was still on active duty in the military. He was later shipped overseas to the war’s Pacific theatre.

“I spent six months on Leyte Island in the Philippines and another six months at Fort (William) McKinley, just south of Manila on the island of Luzon, also in the Philippines.”

Doty returned stateside early in 1945, just after VJ (Victory over Japan) Day.

“On VJ Day, I was playing a saxophone in a band at an Officers’ Club dance on Manila Bay,” he said.

On his return to civilian life, Doty enrolled in the music education program at Chico State College, now a university, where his wife, Betty, was working as a teacher. To help pay for his college expenses, Doty also found work as a fifth-grade teacher in Galt, 120 miles south of Chico and 20 miles south of Sacramento.

Doty eventually graduated from Chico State in 1949 with a degree in music education.

From 1949 to 1952, he had a 28-piece band and a 40-voice choir at Hamilton City High School, which back then had just 125 students enrolled in all four class levels, freshmen through seniors.

When Doty arrived in Anderson, the Spanish-style school that originally graced the hill was still being used, although it was nearing the end of its many years of service, he said.

“I taught there for my first 11 years, but whenever the noon well went off, the whole building would shake because the cafeteria was upstairs and everyone had to climb up and down the stairs,” Doty recalled.