JERSEY SHORE - Carsten Jon Ahrens, 68, of Jersey Shore has led a life sharing his great love for music. For 37 years, from 1963-2000, he taught in public school, first in Austin, a small borough in Potter County, from 1963-67, and then in the Jersey Shore School District from 1967-2000.
His interest in music actually began as a toddler, growing up in Pittsburgh. Born on March 3, 1942, to Carsten Charles and Dorothy Christine Anderson Ahrens, a very young Carsten Jon, as recalled to him by his father, used to pile up blocks, imagine that they made up an organ, and then pretend to play, humming and singing along. Apparently, he was influenced very early by his father, who, although he had very little training (only about five lessons), "could play anything by ear," according to Ahrens, and used to "play the piano and sing us to sleep every night, we (himself, a brother and two sisters) upstairs and he down, playing and singing at the top of his lungs."
When Ahrens was about 4 years old, his parents recognized that he had some talent, because when they played classical music from their 78 rpm record collection, young Ahrens would go to their piano and try to play the themes. They arranged for him to have piano lessons for 50 cents a half hour with a man who walked to their house to give them. "There was never any choice; they insisted on my taking piano lessons until I was 17," he said. "My mother supported it, believing that with my talent I just had to do it."
In third grade, Ahrens tried to learn to play the violin also. But after he broke a string, he was afraid of getting into trouble for it, not realizing that it was a common thing for kids to break strings. So he didn't go to his upcoming scheduled lessons. He finally just turned the instrument in.
In sixth grade, he started playing the trumpet, walking from his elementary school to the high school for lessons. His instructor, however, decided that his lip wasn't suited to that instrument, so he became a baritone horn player.
In 1954, Ahrens' father, who was a ranger-naturalist, obtained a Ford Fellowship to study at Oregon State University for a year to earn a second degree in conservation. While there, his father convinced the music staff at the university to take Ahrens on as a first-year organ student. Ahrens also came across a pianist in the Student Union, who played the blues and boogie-woogie. It was the first time he had heard that kind of music, and he began trying to play it himself, much to the chagrin of his father, who wanted him only to train in classical music.
Back in Pittsburgh in ninth grade, Ahrens had to make a choice whether to be a part of the choir in high school or to continue in the band playing his baritone horn. He opted for the choir, becoming the piano accompanist, along with singing a cappella bass.
After graduating from Pittsburgh's Langley High School in 1959 with a math-science option, Ahrens decided instead to focus on music in college because, he admitted, "I had to study to do the physics and math, but by that time it was much easier to do the music." He matriculated that fall at Indiana State Teachers' College (IUP of today), intending to earn a bachelor's degree in music education.
Required to be in the marching band his freshman year, Ahrens returned to playing the baritone horn that year and the next. When his piano instructor wanted to "remake" his playing of that instrument, he decided not to continue those lessons, instead to "learn to play everything." So he took clarinet, bassoon, saxophone, viola, double bass and keyboard lessons. He also took and loved an arranging class, and sang bass in all the choirs.
In his senior year, he did his student teaching at Penns Manor School District outside of Indiana. He went through three six-week sessions - at the elementary, middle and high school levels - loving the elementary experience but not the other two sessions where he had to teach general music to "kids who didn't want to be there" and deal with a high school mentor teacher who was less than helpful.
Passing the student teaching requirement, but not with the best of grades, Ahrens left school the spring of 1963 after that experience, having only one course, and not one he really wanted to take, Audiovisual Aids, to complete. He remained in his Indiana apartment, playing in dance bands on weekends "up and down Route 119." He remembers thinking at the time, "This is the life for me!"
But later that spring he got a call from his mother informing him of a six-week, end-of-year, emergency public school opening for a music teacher in the Austin School District. He went, interviewed, and they were happy to get him an emergency certificate and give him the job.
"I taught those six weeks, and I was hooked," Ahrens said. Not only did he teach music in all 12 grades, but he also instructed English classes in grades seven through nine that spring. Of the English teaching experience he said, "I might not have known the rules, but I could write well, and I got through it nicely."
Pleased, they offered him a full-time job for the fall of 1963 if he would take the audiovisual course at Indiana that summer and finish his degree. He did so, and returned to begin what would become the first of 37 consecutive years of teaching of music.
During that first year, he also gave piano lessons to a female senior student of his at her home. As payment each time, he would receive a wonderful "home-cooked meal" prepared by the girl's mother, a lady who later ran a restaurant in Emporium for a long time.
After that girl, her name was Donna, graduated in 1964, Ahrens began dating her. They were married on Aug. 21, 1965. Asked what attracted her to him, she replied, "The first thing I saw were his broad shoulders, and he was different than anyone else I had known in the very limited Austin area."
Asked what attracted him to her, Ahrens replied, "She was very independent and self-sufficient - I liked that. She played the flute and liked music. And she seemed to like me, although I couldn't understand why."
In 1967, Ahrens found out about an attractive opening at the much larger Jersey Shore Area School District. One of 13 applicants, he was chosen. "I have no idea why they hired me, except that I'm a good talker, and I must have talked a good line," he said. So the Ahrens moved to Jersey Shore for the 1967-68 school year.
At the high school level the first four years, and in charge of the marching band, he moved to the elementary level in 1971. Of his 65-piece elementary bands those years he said, "It was wonderful. We had a good time."
The high times lasted until the mid-1980s, when cutbacks trimmed some departments, including music. Ahrens, however, remained as a full-time instructor at the elementary level until 1998. Then the final two years of his teaching career he was the elementary school music coordinator, training others at the various district elementary schools, especially the choral instructors, and still doing a little elementary instrumental instruction himself.
Aside from his duties in the Jersey Shore Area School District those 33 years, Ahrens was and still is a very active participant in the borough's and the surrounding area's music offerings. For 41 years he played the organ and directed the choirs in various churches in Jersey Shore, Lock Haven, Montoursville and Woolrich.
Throughout the 1970s and into the early 1980s, Ahrens played in a band called The Classics. "We were the house band of what was then the Lycoming Hotel, which became the Genetti while we were there. We played Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights, often did weddings in the hotel, and we played at other locations also. The four members - myself, Ray Tyler, and Frank and Nick Casale - did four-part vocal harmonies, and we each played instruments as well. I played piano, organ and synthesizer. I think it was quite a band in its day."
After his school retirement in 2000, Ahrens played, but "not consistently," for Williamsport's Scottish Rite Imperial Teteque Band for five or six years, even playing trombone one of those years, percussion another. He also directed the Jersey Shore Town Band for two-and-a-half years. In addition, he sang bass with the Williamsport Chamber Choir (a semiprofessional audition group with concert stipends) for two complete seasons. And he has been playing (again, admittedly, on-and-off) for Williamsport's Repasz Band for the past six or seven years - bass clarinet in the winter, tuba in the summer. Most recently, he has joined the new Central Pennsylvania Community Band out of Mill Hall, playing mostly bass clarinet.
Breaking new ground, Ahrens now is doing moderating (announcing) duties at area concerts. His first appearance was with the Repasz narrating "The Night Before Christmas." He has also been doing some for the Teteque Band. This year he may be narrating "Casey at the Bat" for the Repasz.
"I'm enjoying the narration very much," he stated. "My mother had said that if I didn't go into music that I should become a radio announcer."
Asked if he expected to end his participation in music someday, Ahrens replied, "Oh, I can't put an end to it. I'm happy doing what I'm doing. I'll participate as long as I can. Music is a part of me. It's just there. There's not much I can do about it. I've fought it sometimes, but there's not much point in my doing so. If I don't play for a season, I get bored, and then I'm right back there."
Asked to sum up his life so far, Ahrens replied, "I wouldn't do anything differently. It's been a wonderful life, and if I were to die tomorrow, I would feel like, wow, what a trip."
During their marriage "trip," which will reach the 45-year mark in August, the Ahrens have raised four children and are the grandparents of nine.
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