Former Students Remember
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Recital Programs ·
Former Students Remember
Since I put this page up in February, letters have come in from Shafer students all over the country, from
people who started lessons with her in the 1930s to people who stopped when she did. I've put them here in
order of when the writer studied with her, oldest first, so that you can read sixty-three years of the same
front room. They're shortened a little, with permission. Please keep them coming.
| THE 1930s AND 1940s |
William Hale, Omaha, Nebraska (studied 1936–1944)
My lessons cost fifty cents and my mother paid half of it in eggs. We had no piano at home, so Mrs. Shafer let
me come over on Tuesday and Thursday evenings to practice on the upright while she fixed supper in the kitchen.
Every so often she'd call out "B-flat!" over the sound of the frying pan, and she was always right. I didn't
know until I was grown how unusual that was. I have played the organ at my church in Omaha for thirty-one years.
Betty Dublin, Denver, Colorado (studied 1937–1947)
I was in her very first spring recital that was held at the church instead of in her living room, because there
were too many of us by then to fit, and I believe that was 1940. During the war she had a blue star in her front
window for her younger brother, who was in the Navy, and she took it down the day he came home and put it in her
music cabinet, and I would bet you a dollar it was still there when she died. She taught me Clair de lune the
year I was sixteen. I play it every Christmas Eve for my grandchildren, who are tired of it.
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| THE 1950s |
Thomas McCarron, Kansas City, Missouri (studied 1946–1952)
I quit at fourteen to play American Legion ball, and I told her so on the front porch, very proud of myself.
She shook my hand and said I could come back any time, and then she sent me a birthday card every year for
forty-six years, in the same blue ink, always signed "Your teacher, M. Shafer." I never went back to lessons.
I bought a piano last year, at sixty, and I'm working through the Thompson book again. She'd laugh.
Harry Yuen, Seattle, Washington (studied 1951–1962)
My parents ran a restaurant downtown and neither of them spoke much English when I started. Mrs. Shafer wrote
my practice assignments in big block letters so my mother could check them off, and she drew a little picture
next to each one: a ladder for scales, a rabbit for anything fast. In 1952, the bad polio summer, a lot of
parents kept their children home, and she wrote out my lessons and mailed them to me every week. I became an
engineer, not a musician, but I play every night after dinner, and my daughter plays too.
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| THE 1960s |
Jackie Black, Minneapolis, Minnesota (studied 1962–1969)
My lesson was at four o'clock on Fridays. On Friday, November 22, 1963, I rode my bike over after school like
always, and she met me at the side door. She had the radio on in the kitchen. She didn't say a word about the
lesson. She sat me down at the kitchen table and gave me a glass of milk and we listened to the radio together
for a while, and then she called my mother and walked me home, pushing my bike for me. I was eight. I remember
that she held my hand the whole way and didn't let go when we crossed the streets, even the little ones.
She told my mother once that I had good hands and no patience. I play trumpet in a jazz band now, which my wife
says proves her right on both counts.
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| THE 1970s AND 1980s |
Gregory Seifert, Phoenix, Arizona (studied 1976–1987)
I'm a high school band director now. Everything I do with a metronome I stole from her. The one-finger tap on
top when somebody rushes? I do it with my baton on the music stand, and my kids hate it as much as I did. I also
count one silent measure before every concert we play, and I tell my students it's a promise to the audience.
I've never told them where I got it. I suppose I just did.
Derek Nottingham, Chicago, Illinois (studied 1977–1981)
I was the boy who hid under the grand piano during his first lesson and wouldn't come out. She didn't make me.
She sat down and played "Heart and Soul" with one hand until I came out to play the other part. I quit at twelve
because I was twelve. At twenty-five I bought a keyboard and called her, and she remembered me, and she said,
"Did you keep your nails short?" I hadn't. I started again anyway, by mail and by telephone, for two years.
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| THE 1990s |
Eva Platt, Lincoln, Nebraska (studied 1987–1997)
I was the oldest student she had left at the end, a junior in high school, so I played last at her last
recital, in May of 1997. I played Clair de lune,
and I knew she had heard it at that piano at the end of nearly every recital for sixty years. Afterward she told me
it was one of the best, and I don't know if that's true, but I've decided to believe her, the way Lori decided
about the check with a dot. I'm a sophomore in college now, majoring in music. When I play my juries I still check
my fingernails at the door.
Zachary, 15 (studied 1995–1997)
I was one of her last beginners. My mom says I can write this. I mostly remember the butterscotch and that she
called me "young man" and that I got 34 gold stars, which she said was a lot for a boy my age. My family moved the
summer after she stopped teaching and I have a new teacher now. My new teacher counts out loud too. I play the
theme from Jurassic Park and some Bach. Mrs. Shafer made me promise to learn the Bach.
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Were you a Shafer student? Write to me at [email protected]
and tell me the years, where you live now, and one thing you remember. I'd especially love to hear from anyone
who studied with her in the 1930s, or anyone who knows what the little marks on the recital programs meant.
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Recital Programs
Last updated September 21, 1999
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