“While a  faculty member at the University of Florida College of Dentistry in 1980, Gary Langford offered me the opportunity to play trumpet with the UF Jazz Band. During those three years we performed with numerous  icons  of jazz and recorded  three albums. In March of  1983, the UF Jazz Band performed with trumpet legend Bobby Shew and the result was phenomenal. That experience afforded me life-long friendships with my fellow  members of the UF Jazz Band as well as thirty two years of having Bobby Shew as a mentor. The 1983 UF Jazz Band  decided to pay it forward and have established a scholarship in Bobby Shew’s name to promote and support UF music program  trumpet players in the Jazz idiom.”