Strings Attached

by Joanne Lipman

  In the end, the fact is, Mr. K did push us hard: harder than our parents, harder than our other teachers. He scared the daylights out of us. Through sheer force of will, he made us better than we had any right to be.

  It didn’t hit me, until then, how much we loved him for it.

  I finally found my instrument, squeezed behind some old business suits that should have been given away ages ago. The case was cracked and coated with dust, untouched for more than a decade, since the day of Steph’s memorial service. The hinges creaked when I opened it. I was greeted by a cascade of loose horsehair—my bow a victim of mites, the repairman would later explain. It was pure agony to twist my fingers into position. But to my astonishment—and that of my teenage children—I could still manage a credible sound.

  It turned out that there were one hundred people just like me. When I showed up at Hammarskjold Middle School to rehearse before that afternoon’s concert, there they were: four decades’ worth of former students and colleagues. There were lawyers and accountants, engineers and executives. There were people who hadn’t played in decades sitting alongside professional musicians like Melanie, who had flown in from Chicago with her musician husband and their three violinist children. There were multiple generations of music teachers. They flew in from California and Oregon, from Virginia and Massachusetts. They came with siblings and children; Miriam Cotter took her seat with thirteen other family members.

  Across the room I spotted my old classmate Ted Kesler, the boy whom Mr. K picked on so relentlessly, who sat at the back of the first violin section. When I thought back to Mr. K at his toughest, Ted always came to mind. I could still see Mr. K forcing him to play alone—“Again! Again!”—while the rest of the kids in the orchestra watched. Ted was a college professor of education now. We greeted each other warmly, but I was puzzled. Why show up for a teacher who tortured him so?

  “In some ways, Mr. K was a terrible match for me,” he readily conceded.

  But then Ted told me something I didn’t know when we were kids. His mother had died when he was in grade school, before he moved to East Brunswick. His father was a Holocaust survivor who was raising four children on his own; other family members had perished in concentration camps. Mr. K showed his father a respect, a deference, that you didn’t see with the other parents. “Mr. K was hard on me in part because I was lost and aimless and unguided,” Ted said. “You know, he wanted more from me.” What’s more, “the orchestra kept me connected within a community,” he said. “It sustained me. All of those musicians in the group effort kept pushing me forward… That kept me going: the collaborative energy.”

  I settled into my seat in the viola section beside Miriam’s younger brother Joe, now a music teacher, and looked around at old friends laughing and hugging and pulling out dusty student instruments they hadn’t touched in years. Music teacher Darlene Brandt, who Mr. K had taught in the 1950s, stood in a corner chatting with Melanie’s children, who he instructed fifty years later. In between were musicians of all ages and every conceivable level of ability, mixing easily with one another, comparing tales about our fearsome teacher.

  Ted was right. Mr. K understood better than anyone the bond music creates among people who play it together. Beyond his bluster—and behind his wicked sense of humor and taste for Black Russians—perhaps that was his lesson all along.

  He surely learned it the hard way. He had every reason to be bitter and self-pitying. The nightmarish childhood, the years in refugee camps, the heartbreak of his wife struck down by multiple sclerosis. All those years while we whined that he was riding us too hard, he was raising his daughters and caring for his sick wife on his own. Then there was Stephanie, murdered. There were the seven years, after she went missing, that he spent searching for her, never giving up hope until her remains were found.

  Yet on that day, as all of us crowded onto the stage, we saw that the legacy he had left behind was pure joy. You could see it in the faces of the audience when the curtain rose for the performance that afternoon. You could hear it as Melanie, her three children, and her husband performed as a family. You could feel it when the full orchestra, led by Mr. K’s onetime protégé Dr. Sandra Dackow, poured itself into his favorite Tchaikovsky and Bach. It powered us through the lost years, the lack of rehearsal time, and the stray notes from us rustier alums.

  When Sandy lifted her baton and we began to play, you have heard more polished performers in your life. You have heard more difficult music. But you have never heard any concert as heartfelt as this one. It was plain as could be to everyone in that concert hall, whether on the stage or in the audience: at the close of his life, Mr. K’s dreams—forged as a child, when he stood amid the rubble and listened to a German soldier play the violin—were fulfilled. His orchestra played on.

  “We succeeded at first because we were afraid not to—and later because we knew this man believed we could play brilliantly, so we believed it ourselves,” Darlene told the crowd.

  Afterward, Melanie took the stage to describe the proud father who waved like a maniac from a Lincoln Center balcony the first time she played there. Then she introduced her own performance, of his favorite piece, “Méditation” from Thaïs. “The last few times I visited my dad, I brought my violin and played for him for hours on end. I played because I knew he loved it,” she said softly.

  “I’m really glad I had the chance to make music for him while he was still here to enjoy it. And now I would like to play for him just one last time, to say good-bye.”

  Before the concert, half a dozen old friends had gathered for brunch at a local restaurant. Most of us hadn’t seen each other in decades. Melanie and her husband, Ed, were there, and so was Miriam Cotter. John Stine—the strapping cellist whose music-teacher mother was Mr. K’s best friend—was now a tech executive who sat on the board of his local symphony. Our old friend Michael Grossman was a professional violinist and teacher in Oregon. Miriam Perkoff was a professional cellist in San Francisco. Jonathan, who went on to Princeton and Yale Medical School, was a doctor in Boston.

  Over heaping plates of scrambled eggs and pancakes, we reminisced about the old days, and compared notes about children and jobs and the cities in which we lived. Then the conversation shifted to Mr. K.

  I put a question to the others, because I wasn’t sure of the answer myself: Why did we all feel drawn to come back? What was it about this one teacher?

  The answers flew thick and fast.

  “He taught me what discipline was,” Miriam Perkoff said.

  “Self-confidence.”

  “How to fail. The experience of having to pick yourself up afterward and move on.”

  “Resilience.”

  “My livelihood for the last thirty years. It was a gift from my teenage years with Jerry,” Michael said. “If I had to make a choice between performing and teaching, it’s so obvious it would be teaching. It’s really cool, this gift that keeps on giving.”

  To those answers, I said, I would add one more: optimism.

  If you wanted to, you could have looked around the table that day and seen a catalog of woe: Death. Divorce. Illness. Melanie’s parents and sister, gone. Michael’s wife, struck by cancer, had died barely a month before. But instead, as we pushed away the remnants of our scrambled eggs and pancakes, reluctant to leave, not wanting the moment to pass, our table was animated by laughter and warmth and hopefulness. There was a bond that decades of separation and a few gray hairs couldn’t break.

  In a way, that was what Mr. K had been trying to teach us since we were children. I thought back to that day in high school, when Mr. K arranged for Melanie and our quartet to play at the funeral of the boy who had died in a horrific car crash. The boy had doted on his sister, a beginner violinist. We performed “Yesterday,” as a reminder of how much he loved to listen to her play.

  After brunch, slowly pushing back our chairs, we gathered our instruments and headed to our old junior high school, where the orchestra would be gathering. I
n the cafeteria, we unpacked our instruments as the far-flung students arrived for Mr. K’s final concert.

  That’s when suddenly we saw her, that little girl, now grown, a professional musician herself. She had never stopped thinking about her brother’s funeral, she told me. When she heard about this concert, she flew from Denver in the hope that she might find the musicians who played in his honor.

  For thirty years, she told me, she had just wanted the chance to say thank you.

  As did we all.

  Jarema at about age three, in his hometown of Stryj in 1931. His town would be occupied by the Soviet Union and then by Germany within a decade.

  Jarema with his mother, whom Melanie called Baba, and his stepfather, Walter DeBaylo, around the time they emigrated to the United States in 1946.

  Jarema, who Americanized his name to Jerry, takes up the cello under music professor Roman Prydatkevitch at Murray State University in Kentucky. His senior recital, circa 1951.

  Jean Brown, soon to become Jerry’s wife, in the fashionable dress and high heels she favored, at the piano in 1956, before she became ill.

  Mr. K began teaching at East Brunswick High School when it opened in 1958.

  “Now DANCE!” Mr. K takes charge at a “get acquainted” dance at the ASTA summer music conference.

  Mr. K teaches Melanie and Stephanie, ages five and three.

  Stephanie multitasking at about age five.

  Mr. K helps Stephanie, age three, with her bow stroke.

  Burton Lipman developed an interest in music as a teenager, playing a theremin that was built by his father, Paul. He demonstrated the instrument at a high school performance, circa 1948.

  Diane Lipman, far right, loads up the station wagon in the driveway of the family’s home with, left to right, Michele, Joanne, and Ronni, ages about eight, three, and six.

  Diane Lipman and daughters Michele (ten years old), Ronni (eight years old), and Joanne (five years old), on a family vacation to Florida. Michele was a beginning violin player.

  Melanie plays for composer Philip Gordon in his Princeton, New Jersey, home so he can hear for himself what an eight-year-old violinist can do. After the meeting, he composed Concertino for her.

  Melanie performs Concertino by Philip Gordon, accompanied by the East Brunswick Junior High School Orchestra in Atlantic City, New Jersey, February 1971.

  Mr. K insisted on taking an official portrait with his daughters every year at the summer ASTA conference, until Melanie and Stephanie finally rebelled. In the first photo, Melanie is eight years old and Stephanie is six.

  Joanne, age twelve, leads the viola section in the Central Jersey Region II Intermediate Orchestra. In the background, far right, Miriam Simon plays cello; next to Miriam is John Stine, whose music-teacher mother was a close friend of Mr. K’s.

  The Sentinel newspaper reports on the quartet’s first national appearance, at the Music Educators National Conference in Philadelphia in April 1975. Left to right: Melanie, Stephanie, Mr. K, Miriam, Joanne.

  The Kupchynsky family (left to right Mr. K, Stephanie, Melanie, and Jean) in 1976.…

  … And the Lipman family the same year.

  Left to right: Michele, Ronni, Burton, Diane, and Joanne (with Skippy).

  Can you say “awkward stage”? Joanne at age fourteen in her purple dress, after Mr. K featured her in a confidence-boosting solo performance.

  Joanne at her first lesson with renowned violist Paul Doktor. Mr. K sent his best students to study with more advanced teachers.

  Mr. K was tough on the podium, but always appreciative when he sat in the audience. Here, applauding for his students in the mid-1970s.

  Melanie with her high school boyfriend and fellow violinist, Michael. Mr. K allowed her to date only reluctantly. When Michael got his driver’s license, Mr. K wouldn’t let his daughter into the car until Michael took him on a test drive.

  Joanne, age sixteen, at a rehearsal for the New Jersey Senior Regional Orchestra.

  Mr. K, conducting the New Jersey Senior Regional Orchestra, poses with the principal players from each section. He has one arm around Melanie and the other around Joanne; Miriam Simon stands next to Joanne.

  Joanne and Tom married at the National Arts Club in New York City on June 13, 1987. Tom’s brother, pianist and composer Jed Distler, perfomed at the reception as his gift.

  Stephanie gets a kiss from her father at Melanie’s wedding, September 5, 1987. Stephanie serenaded the newlyweds on her violin at the ceremony as her gift.

  The front page of The Wall Street Journal, October 7, 1983. To report her article about street musicians, Joanne played her viola in Times Square, in front of the New York Stock Exchange, and in the concourse of the World Trade Center, among other locations.

  Members of the Chicago Symphony pose in front of St. Basil’s cathedral in Moscow during the orchestra’s historic 1990 tour. This was Mr. K’s first trip back to Eastern Europe since he fled in 1946. He and Melanie stand in the first row, far right.

  The Kupchynsky family on Christmas Day, 1990.

  From left to right: Jean, Stephanie, Ed, Jerry, and Melanie with Allegro the cockatiel.

  The poster that volunteers distributed throughout upstate New York immediately after Stephanie’s disappearance, August 1991.

  Mr. K’s influence, the next generation: Joanne’s son, Andrew, plays the French horn.…

  … while her daughter, Rebecca, dances classical ballet.…

  … and all three of Melanie’s children play the violin. Here, a gift of music for Baba’s one hundredth birthday celebration, November 2004. Left to right: Laura, Melanie, Greg, and Nick.

  Joanne performs for the first time in years, at Mr. K’s memorial concert, Hammarskjold Middle School, East Brunswick, New Jersey, February 14, 2010.

  Melanie leads the orchestra at Mr. K’s memorial concert. Her son Nick sits directly behind her. Michael Grossman sits behind Nick.

  And the orchestra played on.… The podium may be empty, but Mr. K was very much with us all that day. With Dr. Sandra Dackow, conductor.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book wouldn’t have happened if Joanne’s husband, Tom Distler, hadn’t insisted that she write an article about Mr. K’s remarkable memorial concert. For Joanne, the memorial was deeply personal. But Tom realized that Mr. K’s story deserved to be shared, first in the article and then in this book. Thank you, Tom.

  The fact is, neither one of us set out to write a book. For years, Melanie found it too painful to even speak about her sister, Stephanie. But encouraged by her husband, Ed Harrison, she started writing privately about Stephanie in 2009 while on a sabbatical to spend time with her father. After his death, in 2011, Melanie got a call from the Greece, New York, police, with the news that Stephanie’s murderer had confessed. He was, as the police suspected, the handyman at her apartment building, who was now in prison serving two life sentences for other crimes. His murder trial is set for 2013. For Melanie, that phone call and the resolution of the case after so many years seemed like a sign that Stephanie was ready for her story to be told as well.

  So many people helped make this book possible. On one of Mr. K’s last visits to Miriam Cotter’s home, he hugged her and whispered in her ear, “You are my third daughter.” Without Miriam holding her hand through the most difficult moments, Melanie might never have found the courage to go on. To list all of Miriam’s contributions would require a volume of its own. Suffice to say that even though Stephanie is gone, Melanie still has a “sister” in the truest sense of the word. Thanks also to Miriam’s husband, Hilary, her parents, Charlotte and Albert Simon, and the entire Simon and Cotter families.

  Nor could we have written this book without Joanne’s sisters, Michele Fusillo and Rhonda Slaff, who in the writing process—as in life—have been invaluable guides. Joanne’s mom, Diane Lipman, was a font of memories, of inspiration—and of photos taken by Joanne’s late father, Burton Lipman, whose spirit of adventure lives on in this book. We are gra
teful to them all.

  Dr. Sandra Dackow provided insights, anecdotes, and decades-old recordings. Darlene Morrow Brandt offered up a trove of “Mr. K stories,” and kept us laughing throughout. We are grateful as well to Joan Kupchynsky, who helped reconstruct Mr. K’s story and who cared for him so lovingly when he was ill.

  Thanks, too, to Mr. K’s other former students and colleagues, including: Anna Braun, Peggy Brighton, Paul Fried, Jonathan Friedes, John Gnassi, Michael Grossman, Diane Kerslake, Ted Kesler, Ken Langley, Donald W. Meyers, Kelly Reid McLaughlin, John Stine, LouAnn Stine, Marge Stine, Gordon Tedeschi, Miriam Kling Perkoff, and Andrew Woodruff. Thanks also to Walter Drone and Kappy Scates, who brought to life Mr. K’s experiences in Shawneetown.

  Charlie Lyons was irresistibly persuasive in urging us to tell this story publicly. Jeffrey Zaslow gave us the final push we needed to embark on the book. We are so grateful to them both. Tragically, Jeff passed away before the manuscript was completed.

  The mystery of Mr. K’s childhood history required tracking down numerous Ukrainian and German documents. Thanks to United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Chairman Tom Bernstein as well as to Sara J. Bloomfield and Neal Guthrie. Our appreciation also to Timothy Snyder, Katia Davydenko, Olha Aleksic, Ksenya Kiebuzinski, Phillip Neumann, Kathrin Flor, Nick Kupensky, and Anika Ohm.

  We are humbled by, and in awe of, refugee camp survivors Ihor Hayda, Olga Sawchuk, and Helena Melnitchenko. A special thanks to Taras Hunczak, Rutgers University history professor emeritus, who shared his knowledge plus checked the accuracy of our historical descriptions and Ukrainian spellings.