Alumni from Carver High School and Miles College are honoring the legacy of a stalwart music director at both institutions.

Arthur Means Jr., founder of Birmingham’s Carver High School marching band and patriarch of the modern Miles College marching band died on June 12 at age 87.

“He had so much influence on me, I wanted to be like him,” said Carver alumni Robert ‘Bobby’ Benton, who spent nearly 30 years as a band instructor in Birmingham City Schools.

Means’ life will be celebrated at a funeral Saturday at noon from Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham with burial in Patterson – Forest Grove Cemetery, Pleasant Grove.

Countless students earned scholarships and found careers in music after being instructed by Means.

Means became director of music when Carver High School opened in 1959 and served for 37 years.

He arrived at Carver the same year that Benton was born.

“We all became teachers just because of him. He was always professional,” Benton said.

At one point, 10 of the Birmingham school district’s band directors and music teachers were his former students, Benton said.

Means retired from the city system in 1996, just a few months before he revived the marching band at Miles College. Miles had not had a fulltime band since the 1970s.

Several of the early band members were his former students from Carver, Means told The Birmingham News in 1996.

The band known as “The Purple Marching Machine’’ didn’t even have uniforms in the early days.

“We march in purple jogging suits but that hasn’t been a deterrent,” Means said in the 1996 Birmingham News article. “And our size is deceiving. We have a band that sounds twice as large as it actually is. We’ve gone up against bands two and three times larger than ours this school year, but we have more than held our own.”

Means grew the band’s membership from 32 members to a high of 200.

While a student at the nearby Miles Law School building, Benton said he looked outside the window and saw his former band teacher directing a new generation of students — this time the revived Miles marching band.

Benton said he even chose to join his fraternity, Kappa Alpha Psi, after learning that Means was a member.

“He was a great man, a great brother, a great mentor, and father figure who believed in bringing out the best in all of us,” Benton said.

Means’ presence still remains large at Carver High School, decades after he put down the maestro’s baton.

When building a new campus 2000, school officials named the fine arts building for Means. His portrait also hangs in the building. A sign and marker was unveiled in a ceremony in .

Carver also played a significant personal role in Means’ life. He met his wife Dathia there when she joined the music department in 1970.

Means explained the key to his long success in a 2000 Birmingham Post-Herald story on the naming of the fine arts building. A sign and marker bearing his name was dedicated in 2018.

“I demanded excellence,” Means told Post-Herald. “And was not going to settle for mediocre.”