Community Heroes: Ex-volunteer music teacher Ann Marie Haney orchestrates instrument donations for schools

Longtime La Jolla resident Ann Marie Haney has labored for many years to make certain that songs training in region general public educational facilities doesn’t fall flat. However compensated only in the self confidence she nurtures in the pupils she serves, Haney continues to donate her time to a result in she states is “very worthwhile.”

Haney reported her passion for audio started at age 5 when she commenced actively playing piano, a skill she wonderful-tuned into higher education, wherever she majored in audio at Scripps College or university in Claremont in Los Angeles County and acquired a master’s diploma in audio from the University of Michigan.

Haney moved to San Diego in 1962 and four years later on began volunteering to educate songs to her daughter’s kindergarten class at Grant Elementary College in Mission Hills, as there was no tunes instructor on staff members.

In 1968, the Haney relatives moved to La Jolla and her youngsters attended Torrey Pines Elementary School, which also lacked a tunes instructor.

“The principal asked me if I would commence a choir ahead of college,” reported Haney, who started volunteering there in 1969 and “ended up instructing the whole university.”

Haney, who also was director of the La Jolla Presbyterian Church youth choir for 12 decades, retired from volunteering at Torrey Pines Elementary in 1990. Immediately after owning taught so several youngsters via their elementary school decades, she found she “couldn’t even go close to the college, it was so psychological for me.”

“There’s a whole lot of bonding and emotional attachment,” Haney mentioned. “I observed the transformation in the youngsters as they executed.”

Just as she retired from Torrey Pines, Martin Chambers, then-director of the San Diego Point out College School of Songs and Dance, and Mary McKenzie, a voice teacher on the SDSU faculty and a longtime La Jollan, began an group known as the Community Council for Audio in the Educational facilities to deal with “the deficiency of tunes in San Diego universities,” Haney said.

She became a founding member of CCMS, a nonprofit beneath SDSU’s The Campanile Foundation. She stated it “really had an affect,” starting off with a donation in 1991 of two flutes from a instructor whose daughters no extended essential them.

Haney said she understood “there are a ton of people who have instruments that are languishing. So that is when we began gathering instruments,” assisted by regional television and radio stations spreading the phrase.

Haney’s husband of 62 decades, retired ophthalmologist William Haney, commenced to engrave all the donated instruments with “CCMS” and a variety. He has engraved nicely more than 2,000 devices so considerably.

The devices are stored in Pacific Beach and loaned to songs teachers all through the San Diego Unified University District.

“They convey to me what they have to have,” Ann Marie Haney claimed, “everything from cellos and basses to trumpets and trombones and clarinets and flutes and percussion instruments.”

She claimed all money donated goes towards servicing and storage of the instruments.

To make sure the instrument software proceeds, Haney established the Ann Marie Haney Endowment for Tunes in 2019, which she hopes will acquire sufficient resources to fork out a staff member in the long run.

“I’m however a volunteer,” she reported.

Haney claimed she’s moved to market songs instruction by the impact of her father, Harold Kitchen area, an “introverted engineer” who began to participate in trombone in the UC Berkeley band.

Playing new music gave her father “a position to get to know folks and have some social interaction,” Haney explained. He went on to play in the Bohemian Club orchestra in San Francisco, even further expanding his contacts.

Songs “was the joy of his lifestyle,” Haney mentioned. “It just definitely reworked him.

“I just know that the transformation in my father’s lifestyle was dependable for my push to see that other children experienced this option.”

She claimed her 50-additionally many years of actively playing up audio schooling have “been these kinds of a blessing in my life. I operate into previous college students and moms and dads, and that’s definitely very heartwarming.”

For much more facts or to donate to the result in, take a look at bit.ly/Haneyfund or e mail [email protected].

The La Jolla Light’s Local community Heroes series for the getaway time period highlights folks who aren’t often in the information but make a change in the lives of many others. ◆