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A Celebration Of Life for
Keith Willard Bee
aka Glenn Willard
March 26, 1916 to December 24, 1999
Contributed by Ron Bee.
On Christmas Eve 1999, Keith Willard Bee, also known
as Glenn Willard, closed the curtain on his life's
performance. From the many people whose lives he touched,
he is now accepting an extended standing ovation. Keith
was 83 years young.
Keith Bee was born on March 26, 1916 in Spokane,
Washington. His mother, Lois Austin Bee, left the Yukon
Territory to give birth to Keith in the United States.
His father, Tom Bee, was a Royal Canadian Mounted
Policeman, prospector, and entrepreneur originally from
Sheffield, England. Lois Bee hailed from Coeur d'Helene,
Idaho. Tom played the piano and Lois played the saxophone
for Mountie dances in the Yukon. Keith's dad also ran two
trading posts along the Yukon River where he traded furs
with the Indians. Keith's mom took the first photographs
of the Yukon on record, which now can be found in the Bee
family photo collection in the Yukon Gold Rush Museum at
Whitehorse.
Tom Bee sold his furs in London. In 1912 he bought a
third class ticket for the maiden voyage of the Titanic,
which he had to sell because of an important business
meeting. Those of us who watched the recent movie,
Titanic, also think it may have been possible that Tom
lost his ticket in a card game. Whether he sold or lost
it, the current Bee family is quite thankful, as there
would be no Keith Bee or any Bee offspring had Tom
boarded that ship.
Keith started playing the ukulele and the banjo at an
early age, practicing for hours in the family bathroom.
At age 16, when his family lived in Seattle, he
auditioned for and received his first music job on the
H.F. Alexander, a cruise ship that steamed between
Seattle and San Francisco. When the boat arrived in San
Francisco in 1933, both speak-easys and the depression
were in full swing. The company that owned the cruise
line went bankrupt while the ship was moored near
fisherman's wharf. From that time on, Keith made his
music, his home, and his family in the San Francisco Bay
Area.
As a teenager Keith sang ballads in the speak easys of
San Francisco, then found mostly right off Union Square.
He joined the Local 6 Musicians union in 1933 and still
is a card-carrying member. He married and had his first
son, Keith Austin Bee, on April 4, 1935 who now lives in
Sherman Oaks, California. Keith's first wife died
tragically in 1939 of tuberculosis. In the 1930s and
early 1940s Keith played in many big bands, including
Jess Stafford, Ellis Kimbal, Jay Brower, and Sid Hoff. He
sang, played rhythm guitar and tenor saxophone. Keith
performed under the stage name, Glenn Willard, a play on
Glenn Miller, the famous band leader of the late 1930's.
As a "pre-Pearl Harbor father," Keith did
not have to serve early in World War II, instead working
by day as a welder first at the Richmond and then Marin
shipyards while working full-time with Sid Hoff at the El
Patio Ballroom at night. In the later years of the war,
however, Uncle Sam needed all able-bodied men to serve,
and Keith was drafted into the U.S. Third Army in 1945.
He trained as a tank commander under General George S.
Patton at Fort Knox, Kentucky and Ford Ord, California,
where he was under special orders to lead the first wave
of amphibious tanks in the planned invasion of Japan. If
you make it to the beach, he was told by his commanders,
you are expected to live for about three minutes. Not
surprisingly, Keith became a big fan of President Harry
Truman, who decided to drop the atomic bomb instead of
invading the Japanese islands.
After World War II, Glenn Willard's musical career
flourished. He sang on KFRC Radio along side Merv
Griffin, and was featured on the nationally broadcast
Fitch Bandwagon with Don Ameche. He was also on the staff
of KSFO and broadcast several times daily and appeared
many times with the Bud Moore orchestra at the Golden
Gate Theater. In 1947 when Frank Sinatra sang at the
Golden Gate, Glenn was asked to play rhythm guitar in his
band eight shows a day for a full week of concerts. He
also performed in a cooperative combo called The
Noteables in which all members sang and played
instruments. This group broke new ground, and was
considered very modern for its era like the group The
Four Freshmen but before the Four Freshmen. While with
The Noteables, Keith worked at the Trocadero, known as
"the Troc," on Geary Street. Keith met his
current wife, Ginny Bee, at the Troc, who has been his
loving wife and partner for 47 years.
Keith was a well-known singer on the west coast
because of his many radio broadcasts, from KSFO during
the week, national KFRC broadcasts, and from his concerts
with Sid Hoff every night that were simulcast remote from
the El Patio Ballroom. His agent was Sue Curtis, Alan
Ladd's wife, a top agent of her day. Keith's children
later enjoyed listening to 78rpm cuts from his radio
programs, and one in particular called "Stars in the
Making," a program run for many years by Edna
Fisher.
In 1949, Sid Hoff asked Keith to play in his orchestra
for the summer at Camp Curry, Yosemite National Park.
This would start a 20-year career with the Yosemite Park
and Curry Company that subsequently hired Keith as the
summer entertainment director. Keith and Ginny put on
shows in Yosemite Valley at Camp Curry (now Curry
Village), Yosemite Lodge, the Wawona Hotel, and the
Ahwahnee Hotel. Keith drew on his contacts in the music
business to furnish family-oriented variety shows. His
family enjoyed living in the tents, then a trailer during
many summers in Yosemite Valley-- hardly a better place
on earth can be found for kids to grow up. He also drew
on talent from the Bohemian Club of San Francisco, where
he conducted the chorus, entertained, and produced shows
for over forty years. Among those who got their start in
Yosemite were Frank Oz, the puppeteer and now producer,
whose family, the Oznowichs, performed for many years
under Keith and Ginny's direction. While in Yosemite,
Keith and Ginny initiated an all-employee chorus called
"The Valley Singers" who typically performed at
the Ahwahnee hotel toward the end of the summer.
In 1962 President John F. Kennedy came to the Ahwahnee
hotel during the summer and Keith was asked to sing for
the President during a nightly event called the firefall.
The firefall was a bonfire of red fir bark that was
pushed with a rake over the cliff every night at Glacier
Point, falling to a ledge some 1500 feet below. The
effect, against the backdrop of granite cliffs and
starlit skies, was a "waterfall of fire" that
entranced park visitors so much that the overcrowding of
Yosemite Valley was in part blamed on the firefall.
Deemed "unnatural to park surroundings" both
the firefall and the nightly entertainment ended in 1968.
Keith and Ginny were recently interviewed about the
firefall for the television program, "California's
Gold."
While pursuing his musical career, Keith went to
school at night to gain his high school diploma and his
bachelors and masters degrees from San Francisco State
University. He wrote his masters thesis about the Valley
Singers, his musical innovation underway in Yosemite. He
then took classes toward a doctorate at UC Berkeley. He
taught music, orchestra, marching band, and jazz band at
De Anza High School in El Sobrante for over twenty years.
One of the many highlights of this period was when his
marching band was accepted to participate in the Pasadena
Tournament of Roses ("Rose Parade") of 1965.
While at De Anza, and later at Pinole High School, Keith
initiated a set of guitar courses which led to the
creation of a unique orchestra of guitars which later
became known as a "guitar ensemble." Using the
classical technique, Keith taught students how to read
and play classical, folk, and jazz guitar. The end
purpose of this training was always a public performance,
usually together with a nationally renowned guitarist
once again drawn on from Keith's many contacts in the
music business.
When Keith's high school music education career ended,
he described it wryly as "not retiring from high
school teaching, but rather graduating to community
college." For the last seventeen years, Keith has
taught beginning and advanced guitar at the Diablo Valley
Community College (DVC). The techniques he developed in
high school were applied to community college with great
success. The DVC Guitar Ensemble has performed at least
twice a year during this 17-year stint, and, we hasten to
add, to sold-out houses. The guitar ensemble has been
featured with such artists as Laurindo Almeida, Charlie
Byrd, Joe Pass, Herb Ellis, George van Epps, Ron Eschete,
Howard Alden, and Frank Vignola.
Keith has two siblings, Austin Bee, who lives in East
Sound, Washington (Orcas Island), and Shirley Boren, who
resides in Springfield, Oregon. He is survived by his
beloved wife, Virginia C. Bee, and three children, all of
whom are proud of their parents' accomplishments: Keith
Austin Bee, a mortgage banker and accomplished alto
saxophonist, who lives in Sherman Oaks, California;
Ronald Bee, an author and senior analyst at the
University of California Institute on Global Conflict and
Cooperation, UC San Diego; and Terry Bee, co-owner of
Blue Streak Piano Moving Company, located in Sugarland,
Texas. Keith and Ginny have six grandchildren, and four
great grandchildren. They have lived in Danville since
1965.
In all walks of life he chose, Keith touched many
lives. He considered Your success as his success, too.
Whether on radio, on stage, in the classroom, or in
person, his infectious smile, boundless enthusiasm, and
wry sense of humor always left its mark. That mark lives
on in the people who were privileged to know and learn
from him. Bravo, Keith, Bravissimo.
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