Twenty years ago, in speaking with Charlotte Swaffin, who spent her career in the world of academe, I asked her if she could recommend anyone locally who taught piano. My Good Wife and I wanted to see both of the B.E.s learn to play, and our friend, Betty Crandall, who had taught piano for many years, had retired.
Charlotte immediately responded that Dr. Martha Stonequist would be the ideal teacher for the B.E.s, and that, conveniently, she lived in Kilmarnock. Charlotte had come to know Marty in her role as pianist at her church, and she spoke enthusiastically of her great talent and ability. I hastened to call Dr. Stonequist, who, to my surprise, told me she knew who I was from reading “Excerpts.” We agreed to get together soon.
When we met, the first thing Marty told me was that she did not teach piano, rather she taught children. Over the past two decades, I have pondered those words many times and I increasingly recognize that she had described her role accurately and with her usual great humility. We might have engaged Marty to give the B.E.s piano instructions, but that aspect of our relationship was but one part of the whole picture.
Marty’s father was a distinguished professor of sociology at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, one of the preeminent liberal arts institutions of higher learning in the United States, hence academics was an important part of her life from the beginning. She matriculated at Goucher College in Baltimore, after which she received her doctorate in music from the University of Colorado. Throughout her career, music has been a vital part of her daily routine of living.
Professionally, Marty devoted her non-musical career to serving as the historian of the city of Saratoga Springs, the city replete with an illustrious past dating from the Revolutionary War, into the 19th century, when it flourished as one of the horse-racing centers of America. Sadly, before Marty’s time there, the city lost some of its grandest monuments, most notably, the Grand Union Hotel, one of the finest Italianate buildings of the Gilded Age.
In her retirement, Marty opted to move to Kilmarnock, where music returned to being the principal focus of her activity. There, she dedicated an entire room in her home for her grand piano, a practice she has continued after relocating to a residence at Rappahannock Westminster-Canterbury, where she has continued to work with her pupils, fostering another generation of pianists, but more importantly, a new bevy of learners in far wider areas than those associated with the keyboard.
Marty is precise and exacting in everything that she does. Each day, she rises early and sets out for a lengthy walk, after which the day’s other activities follow en suite. From the standpoint of health, her exercise regime has served her well. It is part of her personal discipline, a practice that I could do well to follow.
As with most academics, Marty has been a constant reader throughout the course of her life. She is also a well-experienced world traveler. Twice in the last few years she has journeyed to Jordan to see Petra and the other surviving monuments to the region’s bygone history. She understands the dynamism of tradition, from which she finds inspiration as a student and as a teacher.
Today, Marty becomes a nonagenarian. She has used her years to maximize the fulsome benefit of learning and retaining knowledge. In that respect, she is a model for all aspiring learners to follow, whether they play the piano or not.
Happy Birthday, Marty! Ad multos annos!
