Former member now director of Mustang Band (Austin Kilgore, The Daily Campus.)

The new director of the Mustang Band brings a unique perspective with him because he was once a member of the group that he now leads.

Don Hopkins was hired this summer after 10 years under the leadership of David Kehler, who left to pursue his doctorate in music at the University of Texas in Austin.

Hopkins heard of the vacancy from other Mustang Band alumni who placed repeated calls to him in May. He applied and was selected by a diverse group that included band staff, band alumni and university officials.

“I feel honored to be back. The band kept me afloat sometimes when I was here during school.”

Hopkins arrived at SMU in the fall of 1977.

“I came to AARO and I remember standing on the steps of Dallas Hall thinking that I could handle four more years of school . . . of course I ended up being here for five years.”

Hopkins said when he got here the football team wasn’t very good, but that changed during his time with the band.

“By the time I graduated I had seen the formation of the Pony Express and traveled to the Holiday Bowl in San Diego.”

His time in the band was filled with performances and intense rivalries with other schools in the Southwest Conference.

“Whenever we would play UT or A&M we would come out to practice fired up. As a joke we would trick the directors by playing their fight song really badly instead of our own…for some reason that got us going and ready for rehearsal.”

When asked what has changed since his time on the Hilltop, Hopkins mentioned the fact that the band meets three times a week instead of daily, as when he was here. He also said that the physical look of the campus was not as nice as it is now.

“The place looks beautiful now, but when I was here there were plots with no grass, no landscaping and random places with huge piles of dirt.”

Hopkins graduated in 1982 with a bachelor’s degree in music and immediately went into teaching. He has worked at Robert Hill Middle School in Dallas, Dripping Springs High School, Lubbock High School and most recently at South Garland High School.

It was during his time at Dripping Springs that Hopkins met his wife.

When asked how he would make his mark on the band, Hopkins said that he would not make any large changes and that respecting the history of the group is important to him.

“I just want to have the band marching and playing its best.”