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  • Preparing Lunch for World Famous Dr. Suzuki

Preparing Lunch for World Famous Dr. Suzuki

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Drawn by granddaughter Drawn by granddaughter
"Every Child Can Be Educated"

It was almost noon and the last minute tempura ingredients still weren’t ready, especially the shrimp. I had invited world famous Suzuki Method Talent Education originator from Japan, Dr. Shinichi Suzuki, to lunch with three of the local music teachers. Sam stayed home from work to help. Our five-month old baby was fussing. Three-year-old, Lynette, was trying to be helpful. That was April 1968. We also had some snow that day.

Dr. Suzuki was visiting a few cities where Suzuki Method was being implemented here in America. Being treated mostly with Yankee food, I naively thought I would fix him a Japanese treat. Those days, we were young, poor and didn’t think about taking guests out to a restaurant. I was twenty-nine years old.

Dr. Suzuki was gracious, but singularly focused on his mission: Every child can be educated. As he came in the door his first words in Japanese were, “Let me hear your daughter play ‘Twinkle’.

Lynette opened the case, brought out her one-eighth sized violin, “taka, taka, tak, tak.” doing her best. This was followed by ebullient words of admiration.

The previous year, on one of our walks around our block, I heard music coming out of THE LITTLE WHITE HOUSE across the street from Holy Names Academy – girl’s high school on Seattle’s Capitol Hill where we lived. Sister Annella noticed three-year-old Lynette and enticed me into considering violin lessons. She explained, “A teacher is coming next month from Matsumoto, Japan, to help me with this Suzuki Method Violin and Cello program. Three-years-old is the perfect time to start.”

I was able to understand and interpret some of the first training sessions when Miss Yamaguchi, one of Dr. Suzuki’s first trained teachers, arrived from Matsumoto, Japan, in May of 1967. Subsequently, I helped organize a non-profit Suzuki Music School.

One of the main reasons Dr. Suzuki’s method for violin, cello and flute is phenomenally successful with thousands of preschool age youngsters around the world is that parents and teachers never tire of praising a three-year-olds of any small accomplishment and the parent has to be strongly involved. Suzuki emphasized and nurtured the Parent/Child/Teacher - triangle of learning.

Through the next ten years of violin and piano lessons, it was clear to Sam and me that our girls gained the skills of performing in front of an audience, gained confidence with a skill in learning, but were not destined to be more than casual performers of music. Most of the advanced successes, of which there were many, needed clarity of a musical vision and dedication of parents. The joke among parents and teachers of the Suzuki Method was that Dr. Suzuki didn’t have children of his own to deal with day-to-day challenges.

Fifty years later, I consider the Suzuki educational principles of learning, growing in confidence and building of personal fulfillment in my life are secrets I can share. The Parent/Child/Teacher triangle of learning is the basis of the counseling profession I have pursued with my masters in psychosocial nursing.

Before he died in 1998 at age almost one hundred, Sam and I had another opportunity to entertain Dr. Suzuki, but by that time we were smart enough to take him to Seattle’s Space Needle.

Now, Sam has also passed, but I have decided to fill my empty house with lunches with my friends.

The irony is that today in 2018, we have gone full circle. A deserving guest might find it rewarding to be treated to lunch in our home again where we can leisurely spend a couple hours and not fight the noise and customer turn over needs of the restaurants.

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