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    I had an extraordinary career as an educator, conductor and professional violinist. When I came to Livingston High School in 1979, there were four string players enrolled in orchestra and forty additional string players disbursed throughout the school district. Within ten years the number rose to 450. This would not have happened without the support of the Livingston community – the Board of Education, principals, parents and most of all, my students.
     
    These are crucial economic times and the arts are in jeopardy of disappearing in the public schools. Music gives children the opportunity to explore, create, perform, achieve, and, most importantly, interact with one another in order to reach a common goal.
    Through the example of my great teachers and conductors, I learned important lessons that had a profound effect on my success as an educator:
     
    If I strove to achieve far beyond my own capacities, so would my students. If I aspired for perfection, so would my students.
     
    If I did not accept mediocrity, neither would my students.
     
    If I believed in a child’s ability to grow musically, that child would commit to achieving. I listened to not only what my students were playing, but what they were saying.
     
    I learned that in order to bring out the passion in a student’s performance, I needed to be compassionate.
    The greatest compliment I received was from a professional colleague who wrote me when I retired. She said, “ you not only made your students better musicians but you made them better human beings.”
     
    To quote Plato, “Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.”