When I was in the fifth grade and had been playing the violin for about a year, I had the good fortune to have as a teacher at our gradeschool, a wonderful lady named Marion Unger. I remember one day she remarked that I would make a good second violin. At this stage of immaturity I became highly offended that I would become anything but a first violin. Mrs. Unger patiently explained to me that it took a lot of talent to listen and fit in with the other parts of the orchestra, and that playing second fiddle was a very important role. As I found out later, Mrs. Unger played in the Oklahoma City Symphony, and was the principal of the second violin section.
While I was making a fool of myself acting offended by Mrs. Unger's compliments, my mother, who almost everyone found it easy to talk to, was getting acquainted with her. As it turned out, her name hadn't always been Unger. Her first husband had been Johnson Murray, the son of "Alfalfa" Bill Murray, and they had gotten married just before "Alfalfa" Bill decided to go down to Bolivia. She was 20 at the time. The conditions in Bolivia were primitive. She had to work hard cooking on an open fire and cleaning by hand, while her husband Johnston worked to build living quarters and prepare the fields for planting. Soon she became pregnant. When the baby came, Johnston Jr., "Alfalfa" Bill said with characteristic confidence, "I'll deliver it. How hard could it be?"
Lucky for everyone, Marion's delivery was easy and little Johnston Jr. was strong and healthy. She got out of there as quick as she could though, returning to Oklahoma, where her mother could help with the baby.
Meanwhile back in Bolivia, the cotton Murray had planted was eaten by locusts, and the brave souls he had taken with him gave up and returned to Oklahoma. He and his son Johnston were still struggling to bring in a good crop using local workers, to convince the Bolivian government the project was still viable, and to recruit more pioneers to join him, when war broke out between Bolivia and Paraguay. That was the last straw for Murray's brainchild, and it was all the remaining settlers could do to get out before they were caught in the conflict. "Alfalfa" Bill had sunk all the money he had raised, around $84,000, into the Bolivian project. He and his son Johnston returned home penniless. Johnson worked for a while for Standard Oil in Bolivia and then went to law school. His father, "Alfalfa" Bill, borrowed $42 from the Bank of Tishomingo and ran for governor of Oklahoma.
Marion got a job teaching to support herself and her son, and she and Johnson Murray never got back together. She continued to teach English, Spanish and violin, and to perform. Over the years she developed an interest in folk music and travelled throughout the state and the country, visiting fiddle players and collected their tunes. She developed her own notation system for transcribing their styles and in 1969 published a collection of 150 fiddle tunes, The Fiddle Book, under her final name, Marion Thede. The book is still a stand by for would be fiddlers. It's one of my prized possessions.
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