City Lights:

Last month, I wrote an obituary for Patricia Harney, the president of the Fountain Valley School District’s Board of Trustees and a longtime advocate for art and music programs in the schools.

Writing obituaries is one of the more awkward and unsatisfying parts of journalism. Occasionally, I read a tribute by a writer who knew the subject well, and in those cases, the article feels intimate and genuine. But for a reporter trying to hammer out a story or two a day, it can be frustrating to try to do justice to a person’s life in eight or nine paragraphs.

It’s not that the story is difficult to write. In terms of form, obituaries are probably the easiest. Just announce the subject’s death, summarize their major public achievements, work in a few quotes from friends and family members, and your task for the morning is done.

The frustrating part is knowing that, in terms of truly memorializing a person, you haven’t even come close. Someone dies after a long, productive life, leaving a legacy that can’t even be measured, and the task falls to you — a much younger person with five other stories in the works — to memorialize the dead for thousands of readers. You may know the form of a news story, but does anything else make you the right person for the job?

Maybe not. But after rereading my own words about Harney, dry and impersonal as they were, I decided to take a second look at her life’s work. Last week, I called the Fountain Valley Educational Foundation, the group Harney co-founded that funds art, music and science programs around town, and asked to visit one of the classes that wouldn’t have been possible without her.

A board member directed me to Jon Lundgren, one of the music teachers whose salaries are paid by the foundation. Thursday afternoon, I stopped by Gisler Elementary School to watch Lundgren teach the advanced orchestra class.

I was an artistic type in school, and band was one of my favorite parts of the day. I played the clarinet for two years, and though my love of instrumental music passed, I was always grateful that my entire school day hadn’t been spent poring over a book in the classroom.

As I discovered quickly upon entering Lundgren’s class, band classes have gotten more high-tech. The class is termed “orchestra,” but Lundgren lets students choose their instruments — and, for the Thursday class, that meant two electric guitars, an electric bass, an acoustic guitar and a set of drums.

The students and Lundgren warmed up by playing “Frere Jacques,” then plunged into a mix of rock classics, Christmas songs, even the R&B; hit “Low Rider.”

A poster listed the chords to “We Will Rock You” and “Smoke on the Water.”

Lundgren also had the class improvise as the band started “Erie Canal” and each member soloed for a few bars.

During a break, I asked the kids if band was one of their favorite parts of the day. They all said it was. One boy said he most looked forward to physical education and music, while a girl told me she had joined the band because her sister and friend were in it, and she wanted to “play something cool” too.

“We’re going to miss Pat,” Lundgren told me. “She was a real big supporter of our programs and really kept things going.”

He invited me to join his next class that afternoon, but I declined because I had a deadline. I always do. But for an hour, at least, I had gotten a glimpse of Harney’s legacy, and I knew it was much deeper and richer than any newspaper story could hope to be.

City Editor MICHAEL MILLER can be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at [email protected] .