Bertha Kirby

By Gary White (CVHS, Class of 1955)
(with input from Donald Cox and Wayne Woodruff)
I'm posting these past pieces just to have a complete record.

My spiritual development as a child was intimately bound up with music. I first discovered my love of music by singing with my parents. We sang together nearly every day, and singing was our principal entertainment when we were driving anywhere. When I was nine years old I asked for a piano and piano lessons. I will never forget the huge old upright piano being delivered to my room. It nearly filled all the available space. I could actually reach the keyboard from my bed.

I remember playing on the keyboard very softly late at night, so I wouldn't wake my parents. I spent a lot of time exploring the piano, even before the lessons began. It was with the beginning of piano lessons that I first came to know Mrs. Kirby. Bertha Kirby was the widow of a prominent local doctor. She was one of the two piano teachers in Cedar Vale at the time. She was quite elderly, with hands deformed by arthritis, so that playing was not easy for her. Nevertheless, she traveled around town in her ancient black Chevy coupe giving lessons in people's homes.

It seems that Dr. Kirby had lost his wife at a young age, leaving twin baby daughters. Bertha was a mail-order bride who raised his daughters and also gave him a son. All this was many years before I knew her. I remember being in her home several times; the living room was completely covered with copies of Etude magazine, the magazine for piano teachers. She was a devoted piano teacher and a prominent citizen of the town.

The stories of Mrs. Kirby's driving were well known around Cedar Vale, and everyone knew to watch out for her. It seems that Mrs. Kirby would look up and down the street very carefully before getting into her car, but once in her 1930 Chevy coupe, she never looked to the right or left, assuming, perhaps, that the traffic conditions would not have changed much in the minute or so since she had last checked. Mrs. Kirby seldom shifted out of first gear, so we got used to hearing her old car screaming along up the road.

Mrs. Kirby would arrive at my home at the appointed time, even in the worst weather. I can remember my mother giving her something warm to drink to thaw her out in the middle of the winter, and saying that she should not have tried to make it. However neither rain nor hail would deter Mrs. Kirby from her appointed rounds.

If a student showed particular promise, Mrs. Kirby would appear again in the middle of the week to “help you with your practice.” I had the equivalent of two lessons per week for several years. For all this personal attention, Mrs. Kirby charged twenty-five cents per week. We wondered how Mrs. Kirby was able to support herself on piano lessons alone, and, in truth, she probably couldn't. An inheritance from her husband must have made up the difference.

Mrs. Kirby was a strict and demanding teacher. I can remember many times when she rapped me across the knuckles with a pencil when I missed a note. If things were going well with a piece, her quiet "one, two" counting might fade out as she dozed off, but the slightest miscue would jar her into full consciousness, and the pencil would lash out. Far from being an ogre, Mrs. Kirby was lavish in her praise of good work. She was also the first person who recognized my creative abilities.

I have often said that my original inspiration as a composer was John Thompson's beginning piano book, Teaching Little Fingers to Play. I realized right away that I could write more interesting music than any piece in that book! Actually, I did write a piece each week for Mrs. Kirby. I don't recall her asking me to do so, but she was clearly pleased and impressed that I did. She told my mother that I had creative talent and might some day be a composer. I wish that some of my early pieces had been saved, but all were lost at some point.

After about three years of study with Mrs. Kirby, I started trumpet lessons and stopped studying piano. The thought of playing in the band was seductive, and the piano seemed to be a solitary pursuit. I have lived to regret that choice, since I later had no need to play the trumpet, but I used the piano every day in my teaching and composing. Even when I was no longer her student, Mrs. Kirby continued to follow my musical development and was always complementary of my efforts.