Creative Directions - a Child's Discovery through Mentorship

My career spans more than twenty years in the fields of education, arts and technology centered on innovation and story.   ​My mission is to educate, inspire and empower leaders, young and old, to apply innovative strategies to expand the frontiers of human knowledge.  

I began composing music when I was 13 at a summer camp in Vermont in the late 1970s.  I really had no idea that I would ever be able to compose.  Since the age of eight, I was a dutiful traditional piano student of an important Baltimore concert pianist and organist, Virginia Reinecke, who studied at Peabody Conservatory and the Paris Conservatory with teachers who studied with important teachers, etc.   Here she is at 95 years of age, giving a concert with her dear young friend James Raferty as page turner, recorded by another former student, Theresa Wolf.  Most all of her students became her friends.  She gave me strength in difficult circumstances, saying, "Anne!  I BELIEVE in you!"  Coming from someone of her stature, her endurance, her fortitude and experience shook me to my core - I must be important.  I must have something to say. We were so blessed to have her in our lives.

She never married and was referred to as Miss Reinecke.  As I grew up, she allowed me to call her by her family nickname, "Dits" given to her by one of her baby siblings who could not pronounce Virginia.   It was an honor to call her Dits mostly because when I said the word, it expressed my reservoir of loving and respectful feelings for her.  Just like when my students call me, "Dr. Anne", their regard for me is sent through the airwaves, and I return their call with care and interest, "YES, Sophie, YES, Adam!"

So many close to her felt this way, not because she was soft, but because she was smart and opinionated and, as we grew up, she shared her struggles and joys, like how to be a good practicing Catholic when you don't agree with the Pope; or how to be a good friend when you don't agree with how they are handling an issue with their child, one of your students; or when you fall in love, truly, possibly for the first time, when you're in your 80s!.  

I still remember her telephone number, almost a half-century later, 410-747-6012.

She was my first mentor who became a life long friend.  She set the direction of my life's work.

WONDERFUL!  GRATITUDE!

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