Dr. Bob McCashin Obituary, Death – We want to express our deepest condolences to you on the loss of Dr. Bob McCashin, who served as a professor emeritus at James Madison University. He passed away recently. We are really sorry to have to break this news to you, but it is what it is. The day that he left, August 5, was also his wife Charlie’s birthday, so it was a double celebration. A Saturday was the day he passed away.
Dr. McCashin stepped down from his role as Director of Orchestras at JMU in 2016, after having held that post for the previous 24 years. He has held the position for the entirety of his career at JMU. While he and Charlie were working at Spring String Thing, he served as both the Executive Director and the Administrative Director of the organisation. He was the person in charge of both positions. During their tenure at JMU, SST developed into the organisation that it is today, becoming one that is well recognised and held in extremely high esteem by a huge number of people.
During the SST concert that we put on in May of this past year, we had the privilege of paying our respects to Charlie, who had died away in June of 2022. Charlie had been a close friend of ours for many years. The month of June 2022 saw the passing of Charlie. The fact that Dr. McCashin was in attendance at the concert was undeniably one of the night’s most memorable moments for all of us. A few different people have referred to Charlie as the “heart of SST.”
The Spring String Thing community as a whole is going to go through a period of profound bereavement as a direct result of the departures of Dr. McCashin and Charlie. We are going to be eternally grateful to them for the fervour with which they conducted this camp, and we intend to continue on the traditions that they established. a
