I met Professor Gould of Youngstown State University and St. John’s Episcopal Church. Neither he nor Mary Lou were much older than I was, but their experience and world outlook was so vastly different from mine that sometimes I felt I was trying to communicate with aliens. They were both white and probably had never been discriminated against because of their color. I wondered if either of them could ever understand how wounded I’d felt at the VFW and the Ukrainian Catholic church.
I trusted them, but at the same time, I didn’t trust them because we were so different. Yet, we shared so much through our love of music and the arts that I felt charmed and even entranced at times. It started out very professionally on a weekly basis, with Mary Lou paying for my voice lessons with Ron.
On Wednesdays, I was allowed to leave half an hour early from school and take my voice lesson at the church with Ron. He was a wonderful coach who taught me how to sing my first Schubert, Bach, Handel’s Messiah, etc. Eventually Ron and his wife, Marsha, started inviting me to come home after the lesson for dinner. They didn’t have children and served as a combination of big brother, sister, and parents for me. They lived within walking distance to my house, and Mary Lou didn’t live far either. I could always go over to their houses to get away from fighting at my own home. They provided a sanctuary.
Within several months, my lessons increased in frequency to several times a week after school and sometimes on weekends, depending on my school studies and activities. Even though I grew up in the black Baptist Church, I reluctantly gave up conducting my Baptist church choir at Mt. Carmel and began singing in Ron’s Episcopal church choir. I explained that I was leaving simply because I needed the money, and Mt. Carmel couldn’t provide a weekly salary. My parents would never give me an allowance, so I had to earn my own money. Meanwhile, St. John’s hired me as their tenor soloist and paid me twenty-five dollars per Sunday, no small chunk of change in those days. It paid very well for a high school student.
Ron and Mary Lou’s influence gradually replaced the home and church life I had grown up with. Ron seemed to be an expert on Italian, German, and French vocal music, especially for the tenor voice. Although I was studying Latin in school and was going to study French later, I didn’t have a clue about how to sing any German, French, or Italian language songs. Mary Lou was an encyclopedia about popular performances, performers, and musical theater. Sometimes when the three of us were together, I spent the whole time listening and trying to figure out exactly what they were talking about. I would come away from our sessions feeling ecstatic and “high.” Fortunately, they were natural teachers and spent hours and hours explaining to me America’s musical traditions and our relationship to world music. Mary Lou especially loved reggae and jazz.
She was the first person to explain to me that American Negro spirituals were the foundation of all American music. It took a while for that to sink in. I had never heard that the slaves did anything of significance except work themselves to death on the plantations in the South and in white folks’ homes in the northern states. How could they have known anything about music? I wondered.
“Slave songs were work songs, because the slaves were required to sing while they worked. They turned this horrible condition into a great song repertoire,” Mary Lou explained. “I hope you’ll always sing these songs, which you already sing so well. One day you’ll do many concerts like Roland Hayes or Paul Robeson. Except I’m hoping you’ll be able to do more in opera too. I think you have the flare for drama. You just need the right training.”
Ron agreed. “We’ll work on that more and more in the oratorios. That’ll prepare you to do lots in opera. You must learn to let your voice teach you. I’ll help you to listen to yourself. You mustn’t sing heavy arias for your lyric tenor while you’re young and still developing. I intend to start you with Handel’s Messiah and eventually get to Bach’s wonderful Passions. I’ll see to it that you’re ready before you go away to college.”
This kind of talk exhilarated me.
In a town like Youngstown, blacks and whites did not traditionally mix like this. We were becoming friends, though I was still suspicious and sometimes fearful. I was afraid that they would eventually stop talking to me and reject me because of my skin color. How could these white people know so much about black music and black people? Why were they so eager to share this treasured knowledge with me? Nobody had ever spent so much time on my education. Certainly not my parents.
I gained a new level of confidence and polish under Ron’s tutelage and nurturance. He paid a lot of attention to detail and wouldn’t let me get away with any sloppiness. We would repeat a phrase a hundred times until he was satisfied that I was doing it correctly with the right color and inflections to the words. In many ways it wasn’t hard for me. I had youth and stamina on my side. I worked until he said it was enough. I never complained, and he never gave up—it was his way of showing love and discipline. I needed both. It was clear to everyone that we had found something deep and special in our relationship. We began to have long conversations at dinner about what it took for a serious career in music.
For the first time, I seriously considered a college education with a major in music. Previously, my parents had urged me to take up tailoring or plumbing—a trade, so that I would always have a good job. I was always fond of cooking and had even considered becoming a chef.
There’s no telling what I might have gotten into if I didn’t have my faith and my love of music.
MEANWHILE, MY HOME LIFE CONTINUED TO DISINTEGRATE. My older brother and I continued to drift further apart—he was interested in boxing, and I hated violence. He and my stepfather butted heads, and before long, they were challenging each other physically with my mother trying to play referee.
My stepfather had managed to get into the steel mills as a laborer when he was barely seventeen and had stayed there all his working life. He went to the army for three years and returned to the mills right where he left off when he was discharged. He managed to stay sober during the weekdays, but he always found a bottle for the weekends.
The drunker he got, the more abusive he was toward my mother, and my brother had had enough. It all came to a climax one evening after dinner while I was upstairs in my room with the door closed, trying to study for a biology exam the next day. The noise downstairs became too raucous to ignore. My mother and sisters were trying to separate my stepfather and brother, who both seemed focused on a battle to the death. They were straining and cursing at each other as though they were outside in some alley. I tried to break up the fight, but I wound up being the punching bag. I put my hands over my head and fell to the floor. After I took a couple of solid kicks, I tried to get out of there but was unsuccessful. I was not being disciplined by a parent but beaten up by a man who had been trained to kill by Uncle Sam. His three years in the military were not wasted. If it weren’t for the rest of my family, he could have killed me. The last thing I remember was a kick to my head over the right ear.
I only barely recall being dragged across the floor by my brother and my mother and hearing my stepfather cussing. I had done the unforgiveable. I had challenged him in trying to help my brother in the fight. I didn’t move as my mother and several of the neighbors dabbed my bleeding head with towels. I tried to talk, but my mouth was full of teeth and a fat tongue, so I stopped. I just sat there and let them minister to me. Part of me wondered which was worse: being beat up by your stepfather or being thrown out of a white church for being black. I wouldn’t have chosen either one, but my fate had generously given me both.
My brother ended up moving out, and several months later, he joined the army. I watched it all with confusion and anger. How could my mother allow this man, my stepfather, come into our lives and cause such havoc? At home, I became an introvert who walked on eggshells; I didn’t ask any questions and never offered any information.
