photo by: Nick Krug

Jackson Green, a sixth-grader at Liberty Memorial Central Middle School, represents the fourth generation in his family to play a French horn made of silver that has been passed down the family tree since his great grandfather played it. Green, who is pictured Friday, Aug. 25, 2016, at the school, plans to continue the tradition and hopes to pass it along to one of his children some day.

Jackson Green has always appreciated old things. A recent haul from his grandparents’ house — the couple had just recently moved into “an old people’s home,” the 11-year-old explains — yielded a fresh haul of antiquities, among them a piano and a rotary phone.

“I like old things,” he says, “mainly because my parents will let me take them apart.”

But Jackson, who just started sixth grade at Liberty Memorial Central Middle School, is also the proud owner of another relic from days gone by — one that he has the good sense to never dissect or otherwise tinker with.

“This,” he says, holding a rather rare instrument of some years in his arms, “is staying intact.”

The object in question is a French horn that has remained in Green’s family through four generations and counting, passed down lovingly from his late great-grandfather to his grandmother, who gifted her son, Kevin Green, with the instrument when it came time for him to join the school band some 20 years ago.

Kevin played his grandfather’s French horn until graduating from high school in 1997. It would sit unused in its original velvet-lined case for nearly two decades before Jackson would finally be old enough to play it.

The moment had been a long time in the making, says the elder Green, who wasn’t surprised to see his son take an interest in the family heirloom — “that’s just the type of kid he is.”

“We held onto it because it’s been in our family so long and it wasn’t something you’d get rid of,” Kevin says of the instrument, which he guesses to be at least 70 years old. “Jackson, from the first time he saw it, was bound and determined to play the French horn.”

Of course, after years of going unused, the instrument would need some mending before it could make music again. The Greens dropped it off earlier this summer at Lawrence’s Band-Aide Instrument Repair Company, where it would be polished, re-oiled and re-strung, in addition to receiving a new oil cap, mouthpiece and cork for its keys.

There were also several dents dimpling its delicate silver surface — a rarity, as most French horns are brass-plated. Although most were removed, a few stubbornly remain. Jackson doesn’t mind. If anything, they’re reminders of the family members who once played and cared for the horn.

Jackson’s paternal great-grandfather acquired the instrument in the late 1940s, while still in college. A band director by trade, Grandpa Purcell, as his grandchildren would later know him, had only been teaching a few years when he passed away in the spring of 1955.

His daughter Jolene Dicus, the second owner of the French horn, was only a little girl at the time of the fatal bus accident that took his life and the life of one of his students while en route back to Valley Center High School after a band trip.

But a piece of him lives on. Grandpa Purcell’s French horn has been a source of pride for Jackson at his new school. The story of its changing ownership from one generation to the next has since been shared with every band student at Liberty Memorial, says Johannah Cox, the school’s longtime band teacher.

“Oh, it makes me want to cry,” Cox says. In her 30-plus years at Liberty Memorial, she’s rarely seen a French horn like Jackson’s.

“When he opened that up, I thought, ‘Holy cow.’ I mean, that’s an oldie but a goodie,” she says of the antique. “And most instruments, if they’re well cared for, actually appreciate in value. So, I don’t know what his great-grandfather paid for this, but I would imagine, if this generation were to resell it, that they would get every bit that and more.”

Jackson knows his horn is financially valuable. If, down the road, his own kid doesn’t show interest in the instrument, he might consider selling it “for a lot of money.” But, at the moment, he’s excited about the possibility of carrying on the family tradition — if he can keep it away from his kid sister, Phoenix, who has a penchant at the moment for “messing around” with the keepsake.

It’s cool, he agrees, to see the dents left on the French horn by his father, grandmother and great-grandfather before him.

There are also a few colorful stickers on its case — survivors from his dad’s heyday in the 1990s. One, emblazoned with a Jayhawk, is a memento from the University of Kansas’ annual Midwestern Music Camp.

Since its beginnings in 1936, the summer program has attracted middle and high school musicians from across the country to the KU campus — including, at one point in the early 1990s, Jackson’s father, his Grandpa Purcell’s French horn in hand, no doubt.

“See, I’m allowed to do this next year and in eighth grade, so I’ll put my stickers on there,” Jackson says, gesturing to the old case. “And I’ll be like, ‘Dad, remember when you did this?'”

And the elder Green, he says, will remember those days again.