William Doud Packard was a man with a dream when it came to music. He loved marches, band music, military music and the musicians who performed the music. He also loved the city of Warren.
When he wrote his will in 1920, three years before his death, Packard made sure that a dream of keeping music alive in Warren would come true after he had passed on.
Now, many years later, that dream has become an important part of the cultural and entertainment life of the Warren area.
In his will, Packard designated that funds would be set aside in a trust to build a music hall and finance the establishment of a band to play in it for the “edification and entertainment of the people of Warren”. The city of Warren became beneficiary after Katherine Packard, W.D. Packard’s wife, died in 1940.
Today, the Packard Music Hall is the center of cultural and entertainment programs in the Warren area and averages over 150,000 in attendance each year. It is the site of a wide variety of events including ballet, children’s programming, theater, corporate meetings, high school graduations, dance recitals, dances, and of course, the free monthly Packard Band Concerts.
The hall officially opened on October 15, 1955. W.B. Gibson was the building contractor and Arthur Sidells was the architect. When B.N. MacGregor, president of the Packard Park Board of Trustees, accepted the keys to the building he said he was receiving the keys “in a sacred trust for W.D. Packard”. Warren Mayor William C. Burbank called the hall a “fulfillment of a dream”. Concurrent with the opening of the music hall in 1955, Packard’s dream of a concert band was being realized with the organization of the W.D. Packard Concert Band. Mr. Packard, in his will, had specified that his longtime friend Bradford D. Gilliland would be its first leader.
But Gilliland died in 1931.
The Packard Board of Trustees named George Garstick as the band’s first musical advisor, consultant and first band manager. Garstick, a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, had a broad musical background, having played and toured with symphony orchestras and professional bands throughout the United States. It was the effort of Garstick, Charles Corlett, then president of the Warren Federation of Musicians Local 118, and Roger Coe, the first conductor, that pulled the band together in its early years.
Because of W.D. Packard’s generosity, Warren area residents are able to appreciate today a heritage that dates back to the 1800’s when town bands were a part of American life.
W.D. Packard took pride in this aspect of American Heritage and his dream lives on many years after his will was written and the first musical notes were sounded in the hall named after him, The W.D. Packard Music Hall, by his band,
The W.D. Packard Concert Band.
