My daughter Amy is going to perform her senior recital this weekend at Loyola University in New Orleans.
Three weeks after that, Amy will get her degree in musical performance. I’m going to be very proud on graduation day, but I might need a pair of binoculars to see her. The commencement will be in the Superdome.
I’ve joked to my youngest daughter, Emily, that after May 12, she will be the only member of the family without a college education. This gets big laughs from everybody except Emily.
Amy’s recital will be the culmination of a journey that began six years ago when she decided to go to the Mississippi School of the Arts in Brookhaven.
She comes from a family that loves performing music. My great-grandmother Helen DeLoach was the loudest singer ever at Liberty Baptist Church in Carroll County. The music at Liberty has never been the same without her.
My mother loved music, too. She sang in the church choir and had all of her children take piano and voice lessons. My sister Pam and I were in the band from junior high school through Mississippi State University.
Amy’s mother is an excellent musician, too, and played at the band at the University of Mississippi. But none of us hold that against her.
Amy was also born with a love of music, particularly singing. She and her sister loved to sing loudly at home or in the car. I think sometimes they were more interested in irritating, rather than entertaining, their father.
“Be quiet!” I would lovingly shout. “I’m trying to listen to (something important, usually the Bulldogs)!”
They seldom paid any attention and kept on merrily singing.
Amy started singing at church, then in school. When she was in the eighth grade, she was accepted into the Mississippi Girl Choir. Her sister joined her there a year later. Amy joined the band in middle school and kept with it into high school.
Sadly, Amy never did sing a solo at church, despite urging from my late mother. I think my mom regarded that as the ultimate achievement in singing.
During her 10th-grade year, Amy learned about the state arts school and said she wanted to try out. Her mother and I had second and third thoughts, especially when I heard that she would be living in a dorm down there.
I wondered if Amy was ready to move away from home and go to school. I wondered if I was ready for her to move away from home.
Amy, who had some second thoughts of her own before she left home, flourished at MSA. During her two years there, she decided she wanted a career in music. So she auditioned for and was accepted by Loyola.
There were even more questions when Amy told her parents that she wanted to go to college in New Orleans. I was resistant, worried about what might happen to my baby in the Big Easy. Then a friend pointed out that foolish college students can get into just as much trouble in Oxford or Starkville as they can in New Orleans.
I also knew this was Amy’s dream, so I wanted her to have a chance to fulfill it.
So off Amy went to New Orleans with the goal of becoming an opera singer and the scholarships that made it affordable.
I still tell her, “I wish my daddy had let me go to college in New Orleans.”
Amy flourished again, both academically and artistically. I was amazed by her voice when I heard her recital in high school. I was even more amazed when I heard Amy perform in her junior recital at Loyola last year.
Graduation won’t be the end of Amy’s musical odyssey. She’s been accepted to graduate school at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (thank goodness for scholarships). She and her parents have spent the last few weeks plotting the logistics of moving 1,827 miles to go to school.
I don’t need to tell you that there were more second and third thoughts when it came to seeing Amy go from the Big Easy to the Left Coast. But she handled New Orleans with only one serious hiccup — a crazy NOLA driver totaled Amy’s car. So I’m not as worried as I was before she went to Loyola.
When Amy told me the news about her acceptance in San Francisco, I had just two things to say:
“Congratulations. I wish my daddy had let me go to college in San Francisco.”
• Contact Charles Corder at 581-7241 or ccorder@gwcommonwealth.com.
