Above and beyond.
Jeannette Fehner exemplifies the saying nearly every week when she joins the VFW Color Guard to play "Taps” at military funerals. Rain, snow, blazing sun: nothing stops the 85-year-old musician from helping area families pay their last respects to a veteran.
Last week, both the Traverse City Noon Rotary Club and the Cherryland VFW Post 2780 recognized Fehner for her five years of service as a honorary member of the Color Guard, playing her trumpet at nearly 50 funerals a year.
The noon Rotary Club last week named Fehner a Paul Harris Fellow, an honor named after club founder, and bestowed upon her the Service Above Self award. Members nominate the award recipient and only a handful are recognized every year. In an unusually small time period, this week the club recognized Peg Simmons with another Service Above Self award.
"We try to find people in the community who have been kind of unsung, sometimes operating below the radar,” said Wesley Nelson, a member of the Service Above Self committee. "People who do great volunteer things in the community, usually not something that is their vocation but it's their passion in life.”
Also last week, the Cherryland VFW Post 2780 gave Fehner a plaque in appreciation of her service in their Color Guard.
"It was for her continued devotion and dedication to our service members in their passing,” noted Jack Pickard, commander of the post.
Surprised in both cases, Fehner was pleased that music, her first love and lasting passion, could bring others so much pleasure. A musician all her life, she played in band and orchestra in high school growing up in Detroit, in a dance band while attending Marygrove College and for years as an adult in a variety of symphonies, orchestras and bands.
Currently, Fehner also plays in the Northwoods Brass Quintet, Encore Winds, Encore Brass Quintet, Northern Michigan Brass Band in Gaylord and the Northwestern Michigan College Community Band. When she first moved up north after retiring in 1985, she played with the Traverse Symphony Orchestra for a few years.
"Music is a part of my life, I can't do without it,” said Fehner, who grew up in a musical family and knew early on she wanted to play the trumpet. "Everybody always thought I was going to be a music teacher but no, I can't stand all those bad notes.”
Instead of teaching — music or otherwise — Fehner aspired to be a doctor. A young woman growing up in the Great Depression, she studied chemistry and biology at Marygrove College. After graduating in 1942 with a degree in chemistry she had no money for medical school so she dropped that dream and took a job as a chemist.
Starting out in a lab at Chrysler and later working for other large companies, the work soon palled.
"I really didn't like lab work, I needed something more,” she said.
A dedicated scholar, she pursued her master's degree no matter where she worked. Within a few years, despite having no training besides being a devoted user of them, Fehner left the lab to be a librarian at Ford Motor Company. From there, she segued into teaching, first at the high school and then the college level. In 1960, she joined the science faculty at Henry Ford Community College in Dearborn, a post she held until retirement in 1985.
Early in her teaching career, Fehner realized that ultimately she liked people more than things, an insight that surprised her because it was the opposite of the youthful preferences that led her to lab work.
"I was very lucky, the way things progressed,” she summarized.
A reflective person, Fehner also acknowledges her good luck growing up in Detroit and attending public schools. Teachers and other students there planted the seeds of musical accomplishment that lasted a lifetime.
"I give all the credit to the public schools, I went through elementary school and high school with that trumpet,” she said.