Dottie Burroughs Reflects on Receiving 2025 Messerli Award

Dottie Burroughs delivers her remarks at the 2025 Board of Directors Reception.

At the LSM Board of Directors Reception on July 19, 2025, Dorothy Pralle Burroughs—known affectionately by generations of students as “Dean Dot”—stepped to the podium to accept the Dr. Carlos Messerli Service Award. Her remarks were both a tribute to LSM’s founding vision and a personal reflection on more than four decades of ministry through music.

Burroughs first served at LSM in 1982, joining the inaugural summer as a counselor, oboe teacher, jazz band director, chamber ensemble coach, and co-founder of the student work program. Over the years she has also served as Dean of Students, musicianship faculty, and music education instructor, shaping the lives of countless young musicians.

That evening, she spoke from the heart:

Burroughs’ Acceptance Speech

Thank you.

Back in 1982, I called up Carlos Messerli and asked, “How can I help?” I had no idea at the time how big an impact LSM would have on my life. I served on the Student Life Staff from 1982–1989, and again in 1994. The following summer, I wrote a letter to Carlos on his retirement from being the executive director of Lutheran Music Program. It reads:

“Dear Carlos,

Thank you for the blessing that you have been to me over the past 13 years. Many of my musical skills and leadership development were fostered and nourished in the atmosphere of Lutheran Summer Music. Yes, I was there with you in the ‘infancy years,’ when we only had a vision of what could be. Thanks for cherishing that vision and keeping it before our eyes as we worked out the daily ‘how-to’s’ of making the camp run.

LSM was an opportunity to make music, to be surrounded by wonderful music and music makers. It was a Christ-centered worship community that daily came together at the sign of the cross, with a tune to surround it.”

The letter closed with, “my prayers shall rise as incense” on behalf of you and the LSM community.

Now, 30 years later, I can take all the past tense verbs and use present or future tense. I’m still surrounded by wonderful music and music makers, and we still worship together at the sign of the cross.

My personal mission statement is found in the words of the hymn, Take my life and let it Be (Chocolate 783 or Cranberry 685). Two verses specifically resonate with me:

Take my hands and let them move at the impulse of Thy love,
Take my feet and let them be swift and beautiful for Thee.

Take my voice and let me sing always only for my King;
Take my lips and let them be Filled with messages from Thee.

LSM started with Carlos’ vision to give high school students a summer opportunity to learn great music, and to enrich the church’s worship life. That vision has now been shared with nearly 4,300 students over the past 44 years. Being a part of the beginning and now the last four years has given me the opportunity to reflect on how many of our former students are now on staff, in the faculty, counselors, guest artists, and pastors doing exactly what we hoped would occur back in year one. And yet so much more—professional performers, conductors, church musicians, university professors, military service band members, moms and dads singing with church choirs, sending their sons and daughters to LSM.

I am so honored to be part of the heritage of LSM but am also looking forward to new ways we can share this community with so many more people. Thank you, Tom and the Board of Directors, for this honor. I accept it with a grateful heart.

From left: Michael Rickman, Chair of the Board of Directors; Dorothy Burroughs; and Thomas Bandar, LSM Executive and Artistic Director.