Remembering James Perkins and Warren Colson by Sarah Cole The last couple of months have been hard ones for a lot of people, mainly due to the loss of Warren Colson and Jim Perkins. Jim Perkins suffered an unexpected heart attack December 25, 1990, and Warren Colson died in his sleep February 19, 1991, after several years of heart trouble and kidney failure. I think the hardest part of the whole situation is the fact that these two men were, in their areas, about as interested in what they were doing as anyone is likely to be, and, like great works of art, they are not replaceable. In practice, they didn't really have much in common, but in principle, they were surprisingly similar. Jim Perkins was a lawyer, raconteur, and all around "character" with a waxed moustache, and Warren Colson was a comparatively staid chemistry professor. Both, though, were best known for their avocations. Jim Perkins organized the Chatfield Brass Band Music Lending Library in the 1970's, after helping to organize the Chatfield Brass Band. He was the heart and soul of the library up until his death. Warren Colson fell into G&S in 1967, and a couple of years later had participated in founding the New England G&S Society. He edited the "Trumpet Bay" until the late 1980s, when ill health forced him to resign the post. He was a fine baritone (and, incidentally, had on several occasions been mistaken for Kenneth San- ford) who had appeared in over fifty G&S productions, in every opera but Thespis and The Grand Duke. He also is famous for having produced the first and only affordable concordance to the G&S operas, which came out in 1986. What really made them neat people, though, was that they were interested enough in what they were doing to go out of their way to help people who wanted to do it as well. Both of them had visitors for weeks at a time because of their interest in both their avocations AND in people. Ruth and Warren Colson referred to their sleeper sofa as the "D'Oyly Carte Memorial Couch", in honor of the many D'Oyly Carters (as well as other visiting G&S enthusiasts) who had slept on it. During the 1986 Cambridge (MA) W. S. Gilbert Sesquicentennial Symposium, for instance, they had a whole housefull of G&S enthusiasts, many of whom they hardly knew. Even I spent a week there in 1985, while doing research in the Boston area, and this was even before the Colsons were even sure who I was. Warren Colson was instrumental (as in it would never have happened without him) in getting the MGS organized in the first place, and also gave us things (and more importantly, encourage- ment) to get and keep us going. Similarly, James Perkins frequently brought library visitors home to lunch or dinner, and the Perkins' home was always open to visiting bandsmen and band researchers. The late Merle Evans (bandmaster of the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus for over 50 years) was a frequent guest, and I spent a month there myself. And Jim Perkins kept track of the people he knew, too. As a matter of fact, the day after the August 1990 tornado which struck Plainfield (Illinois) and parts of Aurora, I got a call from him asking whether my family and I were all right. I thought that was really nice! Both G&S and band studies have lost much of their heart with the loss of Warren Colson and Jim Perkins. G&S and band research get pretty stuffy pretty fast. So many people associated with them are too busy trying to get published and promoting themselves that they don't have time or interest to be helpful to anyone else. Jim Perkins and Warren Colson are going to be remembered a lot longer and a lot more fondly than the scholars. They made G&S and band studies fun, partly because they were good people and partly because they were too busy promoting the topic to promote themselves. Warren Colson and Jim Perkins were both really worthwhile people to both know and emulate. We need to find more people like them, because there aren't many now: they will indeed be sorely missed. [This article appeared in Issue 29 (March 1991) of Precious Nonsense, the newsletter of the Midwestern Gilbert & Sullivan Society. Posted by permission of Sarah Cole, Society Secretary/Archivist. For information on Society membership write to: The Midwestern Gilbert & Sullivan Society, c/o Miss Sarah Cole, 613 W. State St., North Aurora, IL 60542-1538.]