The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture

MAKOVSKY, BOHUMIL (1878–1950).

Bohumil “Boh” Makovsky was born September 23, 1878, to Anna and Vladic Makovsky in Bohemia, a region of the present Czech Republic. When he was very young, his parents died, and he remained on his family’s estate under the care of other family members. He received very little formal education and was trained in clarinet and violin by his uncle, Tomas Makovsky. In 1895, at the age of 17, Makovsky immigrated to the United States at the behest of his older sister, Anna Brdicka, who sponsored his move. Upon his arrival, he traveled to Clarkson, Nebraska, where the sister had settled.

Makovsky resided in Clarkson for approximately six years. He spent his days working full-time at the Charles Kamensky Cigar Factory and his free time performing music in local shows. In the early 1900s a traveling show passing through Clarkson hired Makovsky to play the clarinet with the band for six dollars a week. The full-scale, professional troupe traversed the Midwest.

As time passed, Makovsky played multiple roles in various band ensembles across the troupe, and he decided to leave and form his own band. His first contract landed his new band in Oklahoma City in 1902. Between his show obligations he gave music lessons and played at local theaters. He soon went on to direct his own concert band and orchestra at Oklahoma City’s Delmar Gardens amusement park. After 1908, however, he became a free agent and accepted a new role with a group of Woodward businessmen to conduct a band that would assist in advertising for their stores. His contract was signed for eight months, and by the end of it, he had moved back to Oklahoma City to continue his private teaching career. He also conducted smaller-town polka bands across local Czechoslovakian settlements in Mustang, Shawnee, Yukon, and Prague.

Within the next few years, Makovsky was hired as the director of the Oklahoma City Metropolitan Band. His initial appearance with them at the 1910 Oklahoma State Fair would be the first of twelve personal performances at the state fair. He was well respected for his work with the Metropolitan Band, but in 1912 he stepped down from his position and form the Makovsky Concert Band. Just prior to his resignation, he visited his family in Nebraska. While there, Makovsky met his future wife, Georgia Shestack, also of Bohemian lineage. They married in 1911, and the pair would return to Oklahoma City soon after.

Arguably one of the most significant periods of Bohumil Makovsky’s musical career is the time he spent in the field after he left the Metropolitan Band. In 1915 James W. Cantwell, president of Oklahoma A&M College (now Oklahoma State University, Stillwater) invited him to join their staff as band director and director of music. The latter role comprised administrative duties, such as budgetary management and department reporting. Makovsky was not thrilled about this line of work but took the position despite his initial hesitancy to manage the day-to-day paperwork.

In his early days at A&M, his band was comprised of forty to fifty musicians, most with no professional experience. At the end of World War I veterans returned to the university; some had played in musical groups during their military service. They joined Makovsky’s band and, under his diligent guidance, quickly developed their skills. The band’s overall quality improved, and it grew to include than a hundred musicians with varying degrees of capability.

After World War I, at a time when morale was low in the field of concert band, Makovsky and William A. Scroggs, a student, designed a national honor society for men in college bands. In 1919 they and nine other men established the organization’s first local chapter. Their petition to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission was approved, noting their official name as “Kappa Kappa Psi, Honorary Fraternity for College Bandsmen.” Housed at Oklahoma A&M College in Stillwater, their club became the Alpha Chapter. In the years following, more clubs began filing their own petitions, eventually creating a string of chapters.

During his lifetime Bohumil Makovsky received multiple awards and honors for his life’s work. He was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1939, the University of Tulsa granted him an honorary doctorate in music in 1940, and he was named a charter member of the University and College Band Conductors Conference in 1941 (now the College Band Directors National Association). These honors signify only a few of his accolades, and the list does not include those posthumously awarded.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s Makovsky’s health began to decline, and the department’s quality began to deteriorate. He retired from his professional musical career in 1943 and received the title of department head emeritus. Makovsky was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease soon after his retirement, and he passed away on June 12, 1950, at age 71. He was buried in Fairlawn Cemetery, Stillwater, Oklahoma, beside his wife, Georgia “Mrs. Boh” Shestack Makovsky, who had died in 1940.

Miranda Black