Dara Gillis always knew she wanted to make music.
Known for her dedication, high expectations and the fact that nobody has actually ever seen her repeat an outfit, Gillis has certainly left her mark at Hayes High School. Known best by her students, you’ll never meet someone who has been through her class that doesn’t respect her. Even so, the most evident thing students see when they look at their director is someone who cares about them.
After 32 years of teaching, 23 of them spent at Hayes, Gillis’ time here has come to a close. This is a tribute to the teacher who has not only helped the Delaware Choir Program excel, but has also impacted the lives of her students.
Unsurprisingly, she has been on the path to being a director since she was born.
“I always knew that I wanted to teach public school… I don’t remember ever thinking, ‘Yes this is what I’m going to do!’ I just always knew that [music] was what I was going to do,” Gillis said.
Her parents, Richard and Arlene Wetzel, were both musicians and teachers. It’s no wonder she played piano, sang and even won the Semper Fidelis Award for Musical Excellence from the Marine Corps in her high school band. She admitted that the award swayed her career aspirations very slightly.
“I thought for a very brief minute that I wanted to go into the Marines and then work for the CIA, but I didn’t, actually,” Gillis said. “I’m not built for that.”
Gillis graduated from Morgan High School before attending Ohio University. She received her doctorate from The Ohio State University.
Her first teaching job was in southern Ohio at a small school – only 1,200 students in the entire district. However, she left the state when she got married.
“My husband and I… moved to Los Angeles because he was in law school out there,” Gillis said. “So I taught in LA, in two different schools in Southern California.”
After she and her husband moved back to Delaware, Gillis taught at Willis Intermediate School before moving up to the high school.
For over two decades, Gillis has taken on the role of Director of Choirs at Hayes, teaching Concert Choir, Ensemble, Chorale, Symphonic Choir, Hayes Singers and Music Theory. She has also directed the musicals and advised the Tri-Music Honors Society. She has clearly had a full plate leading all the students.
“I kind of have to be able to multitask [to get things done] and I also have to be able to compartmentalize,” Gillis remarked.
Each year, as part of the job, Gillis has had to prepare both Symphonic Choir and Chorale for District and State contests, where they receive ratings based on their performance. Ever since Gillis started at Hayes, they have almost always earned a superior rating. However, she clarifies that the rating is not as important as the performance.
“There’s always those days where you think, ‘I don’t know that we’re ever going to get this done,’” Gillis said. “[Then you see the students] on stage in the performance and they really feel like ‘We have accomplished this goal.’”
To know Gillis is to know the pride she holds in the program. She organizes performances that go off without a hitch, putting diligently trained, professionally dressed musicians on stage year after year. The meticulous elegance of the choir concerts can even be taken for granted; everyone there knows to expect it since it has been that way for 23 years.
Gillis explained that the most rewarding part of teaching is seeing students do things they didn’t think they could ever do.
“Whether it’s putting a role on the stage that they really worked hard at and challenged themselves to do, or singing a piece… for symphonic choir,” Gillis said. “[You watch] students realize, ‘We can do this, and we can do it really well.’”
Gillis said one of her most humorous choir memories is from a trip to New York. She said she was trying to get a group of girls checked into their room late at night when they started giggling about something.
“[The girls] were really tired… I don’t even know what they were laughing about, but we were making a lot of noise as a result of that…all of a sudden we heard this man yell at us from across the hallway. We turned around and there was a man standing in his hotel room doorway [in] nothing but his underwear,” Gillis said, laughing. “He was mad because we woke him up, you know, but that just made the laughter so much worse and to have seen this guy standing there… I mean, I couldn’t stop laughing. It was one of the funniest experiences I’ve ever had.“
Leaving Hayes this year wasn’t always the plan for Gillis, but changes have recently been made to the policy on service retirement benefits in the State Teacher Retirement System, or STRS. She told her students as soon as she decided, on Apr. 28, that her last day at Hayes would be only a month from then.
“The State Teacher Retirement System made some changes to their system this year which made it possible for people that have my years of service [32]… to retire,” Gillis said. “It wasn’t so much, ‘Time [to leave,]’ as, ‘The opportunity that was coming up was something that I didn’t want to pass up because I was afraid that it may change again.’”
Gillis said she plans to continue directing the men’s Consort choir at Capital University and will also become the president of Ohio Choral Director Association in July.
“The job that I [currently] do is not sustainable,” Gillis admitted. “As you start to really get older it starts to take a toll. So it wasn’t like, ‘it’s time,’ and ‘I’m ready to go!’ It was, ‘I need to take this opportunity while I have it and I’m still young enough to actually do other things that I would like to do.’”
Among things she is still “young enough” to do, travel seems to be at the top of the list. Gillis is going to Italy this summer. Having more time will be a big change, even in smaller ways.
“I’d like to be able to exercise,” Gillis said. “That would be nice.”
Gillis and her husband also plan to add a canine to their family.
“We’ve been waiting until life settles down a little bit to get a new dog… I miss having a baby in the house,” she said.
All in all, Gillis has touched the lives of every student that has passed through her course. Although her time here at Hayes has come to a sudden end, her legacy of excellence and compassion will never be forgotten. As she leaves, she admits that, overall, she just wants students to continue to make music.
“I would like to see students continue to love to sing and push themselves to do hard things,” she said.
As Shakespeare said, and as Gillis knows better than anyone, “If music be the food of love, play on.”
