Despite the many personal obstacles and the fact that I was a very emotional child and would cry or get frustrated pretty easily, I found beauty in music, nature, and art. As an young child my early influences of the aesthetic nature were artists Norman Rockwell and Andrew Wyeth, musicals like Damn Yankees and Peter Pan, and the comic strips. The Boston Globe, our regional Sunday newspaper had eight full pages of them. My early favorites were Peanuts, L’il Abner, Popeye, Pogo, Mark Trail, Blondie, Beetle Bailey, and Nancy. I also found great satisfaction in looking at photographs in magazines like National Geographic, Life, and photo collection books published by Time-Life on World War Two and nature topics. I used to listen to and watch symphonic music early in the morning on TV. My favorite was Peter and the Wolf, with each instrument representing a character in the story. The things I began to enjoy doing were drawing and making models, but I really found a special connection with music. I found that it was the one thing I could do well, and it was an activity that didn’t require me to stutter, or be coordinated, and I could do it by myself. And from a very selfish standpoint, I had a shot of doing something better than my brothers. I think my mother knew this about me, and she even thought that at six, I might even have perfect pitch. She encouraged me to sing in the children’s choir at church and arranged for me to get piano lessons. I was too bored with the lessons and wouldn’t practice, so I only made it to the 2nd grade level of John Thompson’s piano course. I found out later, the rote memory technique used to train pianists then was not the way I learned best. I’ll never forget the first time I sang a solo, Silent Night, with the men’s choir at age six at the Christmas Eve service at the Unitarian Church located in West Upton. I was so nervous that my armpit twitched, a phenomenon I had never felt before. The men and the choir director were so supportive and encouraged me to shake my nerves and do a good job. Unfortunately my family never saw the performance. They arrived too late to the church to see it. Upton was hit by an ice storm and they couldn’t get to the service on time. This was the first time I could’ve shown my family that I was more than that stuttering klutz they put up with everyday. I’d have to be patient and find that opportunity another day.

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