Friendship and Harmony
The Musical Instruments Played by Bob Collar and Larry Pumford are as Extraordinary as their Life-long Friendship
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Photo by Allison Wilson
From left: Larry and Flossie Pumford; Diane Collar Tessier; and Bob and Mary Collar practice practice for an upcoming concert at the Collars’ Leesburg home.
The sound is eerily beautiful -- celestial or divine even. Certainly not of this world. It is hard to believe that such ethereal music can be made with an ordinary handsaw and violin bow.
But Bob Collar sure can play that rusty, old saw.He taught his dear friend, Larry Pumford, to play, too. Nearly 70 years later, the two are in Collar's Leesburg living room practicing duets for their upcoming performance at the Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Ocala. They will perform with their wives -- and an array of rare and unusual instruments -- in their band, the Chymes of Tyme. Their life-long friendship and oddly parallel lives are just as extraordinary as their collection of horns and bells.
"We're not brothers, but we kind of are," Collar said. "Larry and I have had the same type of lives even though we didn't live in the same area. Now that we've retired, we're together again after 70 years, and we're comparing what he did and what I did, and it's all very similar."
Collar and Pumford met at Cedar Lake Academy, a boarding school in Central Michigan. They both played the violin in the orchestra. With the help of Collar, Pumford also began playing the saw, which sparked his passion for unusual instruments. Both men went off to separate colleges the next year, and Pumford soon met his wife, Flossie.
"He heard somehow that I played the piano," Flossie said. "He was leading a sunshine band, and he asked me to go to the old folks' home and play with him. That was our first date."
Bob and Mary met almost the exact same way. Mary, also a piano player, was planning to take her own sunshine band to a nearby prison, and Bob's sister, who Mary knew socially, suggested she invite her brother.
"He caught my attention with one note," Mary said. "He sawed his way right into my heart."
After they were married, Bob became a minister.
"Our work was traveling around to different cities to hold public revival meetings," Bob said. "As we traveled, we would look for unusual instruments, and we collected a lot of different instruments that people weren't used to seeing. We'd use the instruments to attract people to come to our revival meetings because if nobody comes, you can't have a revival. So throughout the years, we just accumulated more and more instruments."
Some of the instruments Bob and Mary collected over the years include sleigh bells, oriental chimes, the vibraharp and the theremin, which is played without physical contact from the musician. Bob simply stands in front of his theremin and moves his hands around two metal antennas. The electric signals from the theremin are amplified and sent to a loudspeaker. And the sound is extraordinary.
"We even found people who tuned rocks and frying pans, so we played those, too," Bob said with a laugh.
The couple plays more than 20 different types of instruments. Their five children are also musically inclined. When daughter Diane Collar Tessier was two-and-a-half years old, she played the bells for 2,000 people during a performance at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Son David Collar also plays the bells. He learned to play the extremely rare four-in-a-hand bells when he was 10 years old. These antique bells are mounted on top of a handle and tuned to eight notes that comprise a 'C' scale. David plays by moving his wrist in eight different directions.
"Not very many people play the four-in-hand bells because not many were made," David said. "In 40 years, I've only met one or two people who say they've even seen another set."
Like the Collars, Larry and Flossie spent many years traveling with their own musical ministry and amassed quite a collection of rare instruments. Larry's favorites are his Casio digital horn, an incredibly rich-sounding electronic saxophone, and, of course, the violin.
Two years ago, the Pumfords retired to the Leesburg area, and a year later, the Collars followed. The two couples often visit each other's homes to compare notes and play them. They also perform occasional concerts at local churches and nursing homes.
"We have fun doing it," Flossie said. "Now that we're retired, our music is our ministry."
The Collars and the Pumfords are living proof of the power of music to nurture friendship, faith and family. It is the same sort of power that makes a rusty, old saw sound so divine.
"Music speaks to people in a way that words don't," Mary said. "It speaks to the heart." §
