How could I have a legacy website and not mention the most important people who helped to shape my passage into the profession I love, and one that I have made a living working in all these years successfully? I will always treasure them as long as I live.
Clarice J. Michaels was the head of the Music faculty at Maryland State College in Princess Anne, Maryland (Branch of the University of Maryland in College Park, at that time) when my father arrived there in 1949/1950, as the new Professor of Sociology and the College Chaplain. When I was five, my Mom and Dad had me start beginning piano lessons, with the promise I would practice at home after school every day. They purchased a mahogany Steinway upright console with a piano bench, where the receipt still lays inside to this very day.
From age 5 to 15, I studied with “Aunt Mike,” as she became known to me. When she felt she had given me all she could, she suggested my continuing studies in voice and piano in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and so my junior and senior years, and most weekends were spent traveling there for my lessons at the Musical Academy on Spruce Street. (It was my voice teacher, Evelyn Martz, who wanted me to go to Oberlin, bless her heart!)
When my application for Oberlin College in Ohio was accepted, she along with my parents drove me there for my final audition. Ten and a half hours it took to get there. That is love and support. We always stayed in touch and when as an adult professional singer-actress, I was performing the role of “Bess” in George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess with The Houston Grand Opera on tour, Aunt Mike took two buses and a train to be there to see me performing at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts before she died at age 84. That was LOVE …
