Mary Deming Memorial Financial Aid Fund

The Mary Deming Memorial Financial Aid Fund honors the legacy of a passionate amateur musician and audience member by helping dedicated musicians access quality education  and opportunities they might not otherwise have. Funded by community contributions, this  scholarship removes financial barriers and helps shape the future of music. 

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Mary Deming, the mother of co-founder, Betsy Kobayashi, played piano and sang in choruses. In her later years she took up the cello. She encouraged all her four children to  play music, and came to as many of their concerts and their students’ concerts as she  could, all over the world.  

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From Betsy to Pineland Suzuki School students and families: My mother passed from this world to the next on September 13, 2023. We will miss her smiling, encouraging presence at concerts. She enjoyed your music so much. Thank you for your cards, sweet thoughts, flowers, hugs, and the beautiful music at her memorial  service. While looking among her papers, I realized I did not fathom her great industriousness! As a board  member of the Danbury (CT) “Little Symphony”, where my brother and I played, she wrote, “We are  constantly amazed at the Little Symphony graduates and the musical lives they have been inspired to lead... Never under- estimate the far-reaching impact of our youth programs and John Burnett’s (our teacher and  conductor) devotion to and love of good music.” Wow! Her message carries over 50 years later to PSS  graduates and their caring, devoted teachers who love teaching music to children!  

 

A few stories of Mary and Pineland: 

At the Celebrating Orchestras in Maine Benefit Concert in 2016, she was moved to tears by  Anne McKee’s playing of Mendelssohn violin concerto with the orchestra. She often talked  about that concert with her friends, and that whole year, every time she talked about it, she  was again moved to tears. 

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At the Peace Through Music Benefit Concert in 2018, she sat in the audience before the  concert began, and said to the young girl sitting next to her, “What a wonderful picture this  is on the program. I wonder who created it.” The girl she spoke to, Charlotte Saxl, was the  artist! Charlotte became a special young friend and when Charlotte came for a lesson on  Saturday morning, often Mom came up to listen.

 

At the Balsam  House, where  she lived for the  last two years of  her life, to the  delight of staff  and other residents, she  was always singing. One of  my young students, too  shy to play for a  big audience, played her Twinkle graduation in my  mom’s room. It  was the day before her 99th birthday, and of  course, mom was just overjoyed! After the graduation,  we all sang happy birthday  to her, and after  finishing, she  sang right back, “Oh thank you,  I’m sure…for the  happy birthday you sang to me, happy birthday I’m sure.”

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At the last Augusta Symphony concert she attended, she was so disturbed by the thought  that someone had stolen her purse, and that her husband was waiting outside (he had died ten years earlier), she nearly shouted. Barbara Moody, mother of alumni student Jon  Moody, tried to calm her, But once the music started, she was entranced and at peace.