A career in theater may not have seemed inevitable when I was a child, but a career in music definitely seemed so.\u00a0 My parents had had a local radio show, along with my father\u2019s sister, called \u201cCandlelight and Silver.\u201d\u00a0 Every weekday evening for fifteen minutes, they would perform music to dine by.\u00a0 My dad and his sister would sing and my mother would play the piano.\u00a0 My father was also a member of two choruses, The Cumberland Valley Choristers and The Arion Choristers.\u00a0 He often sang solos with them in live performances and on the radio.\u00a0 He was a paid soloist on a church choir and played Santa Claus, and his elf Roly Poly, on the radio for thirty years.<\/p>\n
The organist\/choir director at my family\u2019s church, St. Mark\u2019s Lutheran, Hagerstown, Maryland, was a versatile musician who was as comfortable with popular music as she was with sacred music.\u00a0 \u201cMiss Helen\u201d (Helen Beachley), as we called her, music directed and played for shows put on at our church. Though my sister and I were called upon by our parents to perform duets when company came to our home, I think the 1950 Tom Thumb Wedding may have been my first public performance. I, dressed as Dale Evans, sang \u201cHappy Trails to You\u201d with Tony South, who was dressed as Roy Rogers.<\/p>\n
My mother waited until I asked for piano lessons before signing me up. My sister had begun lessons at the age of six, but I didn\u2019t express interest until I was eight years old. Both my sister and I studied with Julia Belle Westphal, a Hagerstown woman who held a certificate from Peabody Conservatory. We were fortunate to have such good teaching from the very beginning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A career in theater may not have seemed inevitable when I was a child, but a career in music definitely seemed so.\u00a0 My parents had had a local radio show, along with my father\u2019s sister, called \u201cCandlelight and Silver.\u201d\u00a0 Every weekday evening for fifteen minutes, they would perform music to dine by.\u00a0 My dad and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":177,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-highlight"],"metadata":{"_edit_lock":["1638204217:177"],"_edit_last":["177"],"_wpac_members_redirect_to":[""],"_wpac_show_in_search":["0"],"_wpac_show_excerpt_in_search":["0"],"_wpac_nonmembers_redirect_to":[""],"ase_chapter_enable_timeline":["off"],"ase_map_component_start_point":["a:2:{s:3:\"lat\";d:29.76;s:3:\"lng\";d:-95.38;}"],"ase_mapbox_style":["openstreet"]},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n