McLeod Stinnett Jr.

McLeod Stinnett, Jr. was born in Denison, Texas on August 30, 1918. He died in Dallas, Texas on October, 11, 2014. He lived in Sherman, Texas through his freshman year of high school, where he took up clarinet playing at the age of around 12 or 13. He played in his first band concert at age 14. He was introduced as the "baby of the Sherman Municipal band". He moved with his family to Dallas and graduated from North Dallas High School in 1936 where he was the captain of the ROTC band. He tried SMU for one year but it did not take. His grandmother then sent him to New York City to study clarinet at the Institute of Musical Art which is part of the Juilliard Institute. He saw right away that he better make music his hobby. He joined the Local 147 Musicians Union and the State Fair of Texas was his first professional job. He went back to Sherman in 1938 and went to work for the Merchants and Planters National Bank as a bookkeeper. In his travels in later years he found in a museum one of the same types of posting machines he used as a bookkeeper at Merchants & Planters. He joined the 112th Cavalry national guard band and was called into military service in 1939. He was just getting ready for his discharge in 1940 when the bombing of Pearl Harbor occurred. He went on to serve four more years, three of which were in the South Pacific. He did not see any direct action but the band was used a lot as a morale booster by playing concerts for various military units. Before coming home in 1945 from Manila in the Philippines in August the band got to play for a touring group of Oklahoma. He would meet two of the stars of that group later in New York City while visiting with his mother. It was fun to renew old acquaintances. He did not do much in Dallas from 1945 to 1948 except play music and bowl. He was married for four years, had one son and was divorces in 1952 to later marry Frances Marie Sharpe who he would be with for almost 46 years. His banking career resumed in 1948 during his first marriage. He worked about 35 years in various Dallas, Farmers Branch, and Carrollton banks with the last 15 years at Richardson Heights Bank and Trust at 820 N. Arapaho, Richardson, TX. He petitioned for the degrees in Masonary in December of 76 and later went through the chairs and became Master of Louis Priester Masonic Lodge in 1982. He was proud to be a Certificate holder. He was a member of both Scottish Rite, York Rite and Hella Temple Shrine where he was a member of the Concert and German Polka Bands. During his 45 plus years with Frances they did a lot of traveling. She was a blind date. He knew Harold Yelton, a horn player with the Dallas Symphony and Frances knew his wife Marjorie at Braniff Airways and they got him a date with Frances. They made 4 nice trips with the Reverend Mark Lewis a Methodist preacher from Livingston Texas. Three were to Europe and one to the Orient. He always wondered how the reverend knew the birthdays of the travelers until he remembered the reverend had all the passports. If they happened to be on a bus on Sunday, the reverend would ask the driver to stop at an appropriate place and hold a short church service. Music was a very important part of his life and believed that if more children were introduced to the joys of playing a musical instrument there would not be so much teen violence. While a member of the Richardson Board of Directors he won several top salesman awards. It is just as well that Frances is gone now as it would have been hard to watch her get worse.