We put a lot of thought behind Myron’s name, as I wrote about earlier, and some things that we learned about Myron’s time in daycare reminded me of one of his namesakes.

Myron Rosander was a key figure in that crucial time in my life when I was trying to figure out who I was as an adult. He was this for all of us in the Santa Clara Vanguard – a reminder that we were there not to learn how to march and play and dance, but rather, we were there to connect with each other and with whoever was watching, and by doing so, start to become truer versions of ourselves.

I auditioned for the Vanguard because of a guy named Dylan. Dylan wore clothes that were torn to the point where they were basically rags, and rumor has it that he lived out of his car with a crushed trunk. He also taught my high school marching band. One day in the middle of a visual rehearsal, he walked up to each of the members in a row and said to them, “you are capable of great things.” He also expected us to achieve great things, and he held us to that expectation. Dylan was also proud to hail from the Vanguard – the first year he taught at my high school was the year after he aged out. It was clear to me that the gleam in his eye came from the Santa Clara Vanguard, and I wanted to know what that was.

As I would later learn, Dylan was Myron’s protégé. There was one rehearsal day when someone in the corps did or said something to disrespect Myron. I don’t remember what it was, but Dylan took the hornline to a spot where we were out of sight from the rest of the corps and ran us through a punishing set of marching commands while scolding us about whatever the infraction was. I truly look back at this fondly. When Dylan announced he was leaving the Vanguard staff in the middle of the season, the hornline gathered around him, and after we said our goodbyes, Myron gave him a fatherly kiss on the forehead.

I recount all of this because of two things:

First, our daycare assigns a color to each kid in a room to indicate which bottles and other supplies are theirs. I had nothing to do with this choice, but Myron’s color is red, which, of course, is the main color of the Santa Clara Vanguard.

Second, one day last week, one of the caretakers told us that Myron and another kid spent part of the day palming each other’s faces. The caretaker observed to make sure no one got upset about it, and no one did, so she just let them carry on. The other kid was a girl named Dylan.