Dr. Harry Holmberg dies at age 92

A memorial service will be at 10 a.m. Friday, May 22, at Chamberlain Chapel in Chadron.

Holmberg came to Chadron State as a music teacher and band director in 1953. He became the division chairman in 1960 and filled the position until retiring in 1982.

Nearly a decade after he retired from Chadron State, he voluntarily taught scores of adults how to use computers. When he was past 90, he was still on the Chadron Civil Service Commission and played percussion in the Chadron community band.

He was inducted into the Nebraska Music Educators Hall of Fame in 1986 and the Chadron State College Music Hall of Fame in 2006.

He was born Feb. 5, 1917 in Chicago. He put himself through Northwestern University, where he received both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, by playing drums for dance bands.

His first job was band director at Boulder High School in Colorado in 1940. It was there that he met his future wife, Margaret Leary.  They were married in 1944 while he was serving in the Army.

During a portion of World War II, Holmberg was a music officer in Europe. After the war ended, he remained in London and took graduate work at the Guildhall School of Music and directed a brass band.

Afterwards, he was assistant band director and a music instructor at Iowa State University and was band director and assistant professor of music at Beloit College in Wisconsin, both for two years, before entering Florida State University, where he earned a doctorate in music education and audio visual.

He was hired at Chadron State less than a week before classes began in the fall of 1953. He was among the founders of Band Day during homecoming at CSC and the Post Playhouse, which will have its 42nd season this summer at Fort Robinson.

After his wife died in 1990, Holmberg said he was searching for a pastime and enrolled in computer science a course at Chadron State.

He also helped obtain a U.S. West grant to establish a computer lab at the Northwest Community Action Agency in Chadron. During the next few years, he used the lab to teach at least 200 people ranging from their 30s to past 80 how to use a computer.

One of Holmberg’s primary uses of the Internet was to communicate daily with his daughter, Marilyn, an instrumental music teacher in Ainsworth for 21 years before her retirement in 2008.

Besides his wife, he was preceded in death by a son, Richard Alban, who died as an infant in 1957.