Columbus natives Doyle and Nancy Register understand music’s influence on a community and its residents. As lifelong church musicians and with Doyle’s background in music education, the couple have been a part of the local music community for more than a half-century. That includes mentoring and supporting students in Columbus State University’s Joyce & Henry Schwob School of Music.

The Registers view scholarships as a vital way to help students fund their college education. They began seeking ways—first through their church and then through Columbus State—to support students who were musically gifted but financially challenged.

Doyle—the son of farmers and mill workers who, in the two decades following World War II, “rented a shotgun house and lived paycheck to paycheck”—would put himself in that category. His parents’ economic limitations were dictated by their lack of a high school diploma and his father’s inability to read and write.

“[My parents] could not help me financially with my education, other than to provide me with a place to live. Their greatest gift was supporting my love for music and their amazing work ethic,” he said.

Doyle and Nancy call scholarships “lifelines” for students like those he has taught and mentored for decades. That’s why, in 2002, they established a scholarship program at Columbus’ St. Luke Church for college-aged choir members studying music at Columbus State.

“Scholarships changed my life,” Doyle stated. “What other people did to enable me to get an education and to have a life makes us want to do this for other young people.”

Doyle earned two degrees from then-Columbus College: a bachelor’s in music in 1972 and a master’s in music education in 1981. Throughout his career and well past his retirement in 2017 as music director of St. Luke Church in Columbus, he has remained an active alumnus and volunteer. Now, he and Nancy are deepening their philanthropic support through a planned gift to create the Nancy & Doyle Register Music Scholarship Endowment.

“Almost every positive thing in my life has come to me through music and the opportunities that my education at Columbus College have given me,” Doyle said. “It's important, when the time comes, that we can do for other people through our estate what has been done for us.”

Planned gifts, commonly known as estate gifts, are one way that alumni and supporters like the Registers can, as Doyle said, “pay forward” the generosity from which he benefited. While he and Nancy emphasize that estates built around the careers of public school teachers and church musicians like theirs often lack the largess of others, they can still play a role in students’ futures.

“[Our estate] isn’t huge,” Doyle added, “but we believe our gift is big enough to make a difference.”

AN INHERITED TALENT

Doyle was born in Columbus, but his family moved back and forth between Columbus and Northwest Florida during his childhood as his parents made their living between maintaining a small Northwest Florida farm and working in textiles at the Bibb Manufacturing Company.

He can trace his interest in music to his maternal grandfather, who taught singing schools that met at various churches. He met Doyle’s grandmother at one of these singing schools, where she was the pianist. At an early age, Doyle attended “gospel singings” frequently held in various country churches in Northwest Florida and Southeast Alabama. It’s where he learned basic conducting patterns, and even as a child, would lead one of the songs with his grandfather. 

“All of my family were musical in some way or another. I cannot remember a time in my life when music was not my first and most important interest,” Doyle recalled.

He began taking piano lessons in fourth grade. Playing in the school band, his repertoire grew to include the baritone horn, trumpet, sousaphone and French horn. His vocal interests rose to an even higher level in high school when a fellow band member invited him to a youth choir rehearsal at First Methodist Church in Sebring, Florida.

“The next day, the choir director came to the school and invited me, at the age of 15, to sing tenor with his adult choir, which I did,” Doyle recalled.

The choir director (a former San Francisco Opera singer) became his first voice teacher, and his wife (the church’s organist) his piano teacher. From them, he learned several genres of vocal literature, including sacred, operatic and classical literature. Through this relationship, he also received his first-ever music studio scholarship.

Doyle lived with his grandparents in Florida during his senior year, and after graduating in May 1968, he rejoined his parents in Columbus, where they had returned to work in the mill. He planned to find a summer job and a church where he could sing until he started college at Troy University in the fall. Instead, he was offered a paid tenor soloist’s position at St. Luke.

Under St. Luke’s choir director, Doyle continued his voice studies. He also learned that in the fall of 1969, Columbus College would open its music department and offer a degree in music education. At the choir director’s urging, Doyle decided to stay in Columbus, sing at St. Luke, and begin his studies at Columbus College. 

COLUMBUS COLLEGE “FIRSTS”

Doyle recalls that the music department’s initial curriculum included only two music classes—music appreciation and music theory—and a “so-called choir to satisfy the requirement for those pursuing a degree in elementary education” (music education was not offered as a degree at this point in the school’s history). Its facilities, a single classroom attached to a tractor shed across the street from Richards Hall, pale in comparison to today’s Legacy Hall.

“Since 1968, I have watched the music department grow to … world-class facilities on the RiverPark Campus,” Doyle said. “These facilities, and the fine faculty and students the school has attracted since its inception, remain the envy of many colleges today.”

Doyle takes great pride in being one of the program’s first students and one of its first full-tuition scholarship recipients. That pride shines through as he lists some of the “firsts” of his collegiate music days, which include playing French horn in Columbus College’s first orchestra and baritone horn in its first band, and singing in both of its first choral ensembles and its first opera—performing as Don Basilio in “The Marriage of Figaro” (he would reprise the role as a guest performer in a university performance 26 years later).

In the spring of 1972, he graduated with a bachelor of music degree as part of the department’s first graduates. While his contemporaries graduated with transfer credits from other colleges, Doyle earned 100% of his degree credits through Columbus College. 

That fall, he left Columbus for Bonifay, Florida, to begin his teaching career as the band and choral director of Holmes County High School. A year later, he returned to Graceville High School (his alma mater) as its band and choral director—a role he held for three years. All the while, he remained connected to Columbus College as a guest performer in its Faculty Artist Series, which in part led him to return to Columbus in 1976 to begin work toward a master’s degree in education.

His return to Columbus for graduate school also meant a return to St. Luke as its tenor soloist and youth choir director. He also began serving as choral director at Carver High School, where during the next six years he had 12 groups perform at the Georgia Music Educators Association’s District Choral Festival—the first group scoring an “excellent” rating and the following 11 “superior” ratings.

DOYLE & NANCY: A MUSICAL UNION

Doyle’s association with St. Luke’s did more than spur and develop his interest in music. It’s also where he met “the love of my life”—fellow choir member Nancy Sturup—in the fall of 1976. Their friendship grew into an eventual “courtship,” and they married in November 1979. The St. Luke Chancel Choir sang at their wedding.

“From that time until now, [Nancy] has stood by my side in all my personal and musical endeavors,” Doyle beamed. “Her beautiful soprano voice has added quality to all my church choirs, and she helped me immensely as my volunteer assistant at St. Luke.  She was a huge part of my success there, and it would take volumes to write everything that she did for me and the church.”

Nancy, a Columbus native and lifelong resident, grew up singing at First Baptist Church, in Columbus High School’s advanced singing ensembles, with the Columbus Civic Chorale. Like Doyle, her talents trace back to grandparents. Nancy’s maternal grandmother, Emma Ceil Allums, graduated in 1904 with a degree in piano performance from the Chase Conservatory of Music, which once stood at the corner of 10th Street and Second Avenue.

Nancy’s mother Mildred Arnold and her aunt Frances (First Baptist’s organist and choir director from the mid-1940s to mid-1960s) were fine pianists who frequently performed in Columbus and at Fort Benning. In the early 1940s, their weekly piano duo program “The Arnold Sisters” was broadcast on WRBL radio. Nancy’s father, Jens Sturup, an aspiring opera singer studying at Syracuse University, was drafted in 1944 and assigned to Fort Benning for training. He and Mildred met through the First Baptist and married later that year.

DEVOTED TO MUSIC EDUCATION

In 1982, after serving Carver for six years, Doyle began his 17-year tenure as choral director at Kendrick High School—where his students continued the tradition of consecutive years of “superior” GMEA District Choral Festival ratings. Under his leadership, the Kendrick choruses received 33 superior ratings at regional- and national-level choral competitions from Orlando to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, winning “best in class” in 14 competitions.

Mentoring became increasingly meaningful to Doyle throughout his teaching career. That’s reflected in his special relationship with one of his Kendrick choral students, Matthew White. White would follow Doyle’s footsteps by graduating from the Schwob School of Music in 2006, devoting himself to music education, and starting his career as Kendrick’s choral director. After 15 years at Kendrick, he moved to the Rainey-McCullers School for the Arts, where he now serves as the school’s choral director.

Doyle recalled his first encounters with White, whom Doyle described as a “big ol’ football player” who needed coercing by one of his older brothers to join the school chorus.

“[Matthew’s] musical talent became evident very quickly,” Doyle recalled. “I would never have guessed that this quiet, unassuming young man would aspire to become a music educator and return to Kendrick to resume the tradition of outstanding choral music there.”

More than two decades later, White’s coercion to join the school choir has flourished into a lifelong friendship.

“Doyle has had my back every step of the way. [He] continued to support me even after I graduated. He subbed for me on my fourth day of teaching, when I had to attend an all-day seminar for new teachers. He'd regularly visit the school to listen to my choirs and offer advice. Even last year, he gave free voice lessons to one of my students for more than a semester,” White (pictured with Doyle at the 2020 GEMA Conference) said, noting that student is now a voice major in the Schwob School of Music.

Reflecting on his own time as a choir student, White notes that choir provides an essential and often diverse community for many high school students.

“[Joining a choir program connects you to] a very diverse family of people who you might not cross paths under ordinary circumstances,” he said. “Singing in a group, creating harmony, is a very intimate experience. For most, joining choir won't lead them to being a chorus teacher; it will, however, create some of those impactful moments and memories of their lives.”

FULL-TIME MUSIC MINISTRY

In August 1998, Doyle accepted what he thought would be an interim music director appointment at St. Luke while the church searched for a new director. Three months later, the church offered him the job permanently, but he put off accepting the job for nearly a year—having been happy at the time with his role at Kendrick High School. The change also meant he and Nancy worked together daily, as Nancy worked full time as volunteer music secretary and helped in other areas of the church as needed, especially proofreading.

Not one to leave teaching completely behind, Doyle continued his GMEA involvement as a choral adjudicator and honor choir clinician. In 2006, he was honored with the invitation to direct the GMEA Men’s All-State Chorus. 

For the Registers, remaining connected with Columbus State and its Schwob School of Music is also a ministry. Doyle said he’s grateful to live in a community that embraces music and music education as Columbus does.

“I will be eternally grateful for those who envisioned an institution of higher learning here in Columbus, which through visionary leadership and a generous community has evolved into one of the finest educational institutions in the country,” he said. “I am grateful to a community who has historically loved music and the arts, and whose generosity and philanthropy have made it possible for us to have a world-class music school and performing arts center.”

He and Nancy view scholarships as investing in that world-class network of music, the arts, and school’s aspiring musicians. 

“One does not have to look far to see how much our university has changed and continues to change the landscape of Columbus positively.” Doyle said. “Our giving to [Columbus State University] is giving to the entire community, because when you make the college better, you make everything here better.”