Rocky Ridge

Last weekend my wife and I attended the Rocky Ridge Music Center alumni reunion. It was 54 years ago that I attended Rocky Ridge, a summer music camp for aspiring young musicians located at the foot of Longs Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park.

I found out at the reunion - I didn't remember - that the tuition back then for seven weeks at the camp was $350, a pretty big expense at the time, at least for my parents. My mother scrimped just to pay the $15 per week for my violin lessons out of the money Don gave her for groceries.

Jim supported my interest in music ever since the fourth grade when I came home from school asking if I could learn to play the violin. Playing the violin has always enriched my life. It has taught me the value of dedication and commitment, and it has always been a source of satisfaction and a refuge from the tensions of my work.

A couple of years ago my mother mentioned during one of our conversations that she wished she had an opportunity to develop her musical talents, and for some reason this came as a big surprise to me. I had never suspected that Jim ever had any ambitions other than raising me. I suddenly felt foolish and selfish.

I knew that Jim had been a very good singer in high school, and that when she first enrolled in college she had majored in fine arts. I had heard the story about how she had to change her major because Uncle Haskell, who was supporting her, couldn't afford the $25 fee for the chorus. Jim never forgave him for his sarcastic comment to her the day she came home excited about winning the audition: "Do you think you're going to be an opera star?"

Then I recalled that Jim had taken a class in Italian at OU. I asked her why and she told me it was so that she could sing Italian opera. She really did want to be an opera singer!

I remembered a letter that Jim had written home from college to her younger sister Oteka, raving about hearing a performance of the opera, Carmen, so during one of my visits home I played a recording of Carmen for her. As Jim listened she commented, "The lead role calls for a mezzo-soprano. That's what I was."

Jim went on to say that she was working on one of the arias from Carmen when she had to drop out of the fine arts school. She told me how she regretted never learning to read music. She said, "If I only had the fundamentals, something to work with."

Jim said that when she auditioned for the OU Chorus she had to find someone to help her who could read music. She told me about how later on when she sang in our church choir, she had to struggle to learn her part, having only a rough idea of how notes got higher and lower in pitch as they went up or down on the musical staff. She also had no idea about how to interpret the rhythms. She just had to try to memorize her part.

Another time Jim told me about watching a TV news segment about a town in Italy where opera singers went to retire. They continued to enjoy their music by singing together and performing for the community. "That would be nice," she said.

Learning about Jim's lost opportunities in music made me sad. Maybe it's something about the time she lived in, or maybe it's something about the relationship between a mother and a son, but Jim was always so committed to my success, it never occurred to me that she might even have any other goals.

It wasn't until Jim was in her 90's that she gave me this slight glimpse of her personal dreams. Suddenly I understood how she could look at my enjoyment of music, and envy me.