Editor’s Note: Music4Life founder David Endicott died unexpectedly on May 30. Music4Life plans to continue its work, both as a tribute to David and to help the many children who benefit from its services. 

Music saved David Endicott’s life.

Endicott was a wayward youth when a band director named Emery Nordness took an interest in him. It changed his path.

“I was a kid headed for trouble, hanging out with the wrong crowd,” recalls Endicott, a sixth grader at the time in a small farming town in southwestern Wisconsin. “He took me off the streets and gave me something meaningful to do with my time. He opened this whole wonderful world of music to me for the rest of my life.”

Endicott became a “fairly accomplished” musician, first picking up the trumpet before switching to the tuba. He began studying music in college but went on to a career in public service, serving as press secretary to former U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton in the mid 1980s. He later founded a consulting group that worked with CEOs and senior management teams.

Endicott, though, never forgot the man — affectionately known as “Nordy” — who gave him purpose when others had written him off. In 2007 Endicott launched Music4Life, a Seattle-based music education nonprofit that has since donated about $2 million worth of use  musical instruments to school districts across the Puget Sound region for families in need. Each instrument is used by up to five students during its remaining lifetime (the students themselves don’t “own” the instrument).

The idea for Music4Life came when Endicott served on the board of the Seattle Symphony. He wanted to honor Nordness
— who served as band director at Viroqua High School for 31 years, and who also led the Viroqua City Band — but had no idea how.

“How can you adequately say ‘thank you’ to somebody like that? I thought about it for several years,” he recalls. “Finally, the light went on.”

Endicott estimates that the nonprofit has donated 3,100 full-size instruments, mostly from “people that have them in their garages, attics, or closets.” Music4Life has also donated about 5,000 recorders.

Endicott cites research that shows students who participate in music do better in school. The nonprofit works with numerous school districts: Auburn, Bremerton, Edmonds, Everett, Highline, Issaquah, Kent, Lake Washington, Marysville, Monroe, Northshore, Riverview (Duvall/Carnation), Sky Valley (Sultan area) and Shoreline. It has also worked with individual schools.

Fifteen local chapters (each of which is connected to a local school district) raise funds. The organization is open to working with any public school district that implements a district-based Music4Life program.

“I wasn’t around music for a long time,” he says, “but I just kept thinking about my band teacher who I believe seriously saved my life. I just finally realized I could pass the gift he gave me onto other kids. That’s why I do what I do.”