LUNCH FOR WORLD FAMOUS DR. SUZUKI
Jul
17
Dr. Suzuki visited 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, Sam and I 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 her leather 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 Japanese in the first training sessions when Miss Yamaguchi arrived in May, 1968. She was one of Dr. Suzuki’s first trained teachers after WWII. Subsequently, I helped organize the first non-profit Suzuki Music School.
Dr. Suzuki’s method for violin, cello and flute is phenomenally successful with thousands of preschool age youngsters around the world. The reason for such results is that parents and teachers never tire of praising three-year-olds of any small accomplishment. Also the parent has to be strongly involved. Suzuki emphasized and nurtured the Parent/Child/Teacher - triangle of learning.
Through the following ten years of violin and piano lessons, it was clear to Sam and me that our girls gained skills of performing in front of an audience and gained confidence as casual performers of music. The joke among parents and teachers of the Suzuki Method was that Dr. Suzuki didn’t have children of his own to deal with the day-to-day challenges.
Fifty years later, Suzuki educational principles of learning, growing in confidence and building of personal fulfillment in my life are secrets I 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 Dr. Suzuki 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.
The irony is, that today in 2021, we have come full circle. Guests find it rewarding to be treated to lunch in our home again. We can leisurely spend several hours and not fight the noise and customer turn over needs of the restaurants.
