Goodbye to Dr. Luby

I received news today that my professor from UNC and violin teacher for 3 months unexpectedly died.

I went to his house to have a lesson with him when I was a senior in high school. I was extremely nervous about playing for him, as I was extremely nervous about playing in general, and about being accepted to UNC. His house was very cool, like all professors' homes you get to see, filled with antiques and trinquets from world travel. I was relieved that he was so nice and that he acknowledged that I was nervous. No one had ever said it out loud, much less that it was ok to be nervous. I think most people were either blind to it because I was very good at hiding it, or because they chose to ignore it.

While studying with him, I improved a great deal technically but I also discovered strengths I didn't know I already had. I remember playing Etudes while he pushed me to sight read faster and faster. I was playing so quickly that I was doing it without thinking, which was a big deal for me since I tended to over-think and inhibit myself. I didn't even know I sight read that way until he got it out of me.

Toward the end of the semester, I was falling to pieces. I missed a lesson because I missed my bus. I was late because I overslept. But instead of being chewed out, he asked me what was wrong. I told him that my boyfriend had just gone back home to Charleston and that I wasn't enjoying school very much. He said "That must be hard"; a simple acknowledgement of my feelings that no one had given me before. Then he asked, "Are you going to leave school?" "Yes." "Well, I understand how hard it is to be away from someone you love. But I hope if you come back, that we get to work together again." And then we finished our last lesson together.

Dr. Luby was the only adult at that time in my life who acknowledged my feelings as valid, and expressed any understanding or support for the choice I had made to leave school. He was also the first teacher I had who made me believe that I was talented, not by telling me but by helping me to fulfill my own potential. So thank you, Dr. Luby, for sharing the gift of music with me as a teacher, and for being a real person at a time when I needed it.