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KISS and Tell

Swanton, Vermont - June 6, 2007

A noteworthy concert was held Wednesday night at Missisquoi Valley Union High School.

It's the final performance for band director Brooke Ostrander, who is retiring after 23 years at the school.

"It's such a legacy he's leaving behind," said senior Annie Hartman, who plays the flute. "He's just such a creative, outstanding person."

"He just had this driving effect with all his students -- not just one student but all of them," said former student Armand Messier, who is now the band director at Bellows Free Academy in St. Albans. "He inspired us to do our best and put good music out."

Ostrander was in a rock band back in the early 1970s, but quit to return to his first love: teaching. He went on to teach hundreds of kids in New Jersey, Kansas, Montana and Vermont. The band went on to become KISS.

"You wouldn't be able to tell he was a member of KISS," joked senior Wesley Kempton, who plays the French horn. "He's really dulled down a little, I guess would be the best way to say it."

"That's a way to meet people, to say my band teacher was in KISS," he added.

Long before the iconic KISS makeup, the band was incarnated as Wicked Lester, headed by famed frontman Gene Simmons and a young Brooke Ostrander.

Life as a rock star seems a galaxy away from teaching in small town Vermont. But Ostrander said he has no regrets.

"I think about it," he said. "People have asked if I regretted leaving, and I haven't, other than the fact that every now and then ... I think it would be nice to have $30 million in the bank. But other than that, I think I made the right decision when I did."

His own two kids were proud to have him as their favorite teacher, as well as their dad. They surprised him by inviting dozens of his former students to return for "Mr. O's" final concert.

"It's been so emotional for us to hear how many people were affected by our father," Katy Ostrander said.

Some of Ostrander's former students have even become music teachers themselves. That legacy -- a love of music that has endured long after that good-bye "kiss" decades ago.

Kate Duffy - WCAX News