Violin is common bond for women
Judith Priest of Marion County Park and Lake recently entertained four school mates from Wichita East High School.
They all had one thing in common. They played violins in the 80-member school orchestra and became close friends.
Four of the women graduated in the class of 1953 and were celebrating a 50th reunion.
Priest was a missionary to Algeria. She married a pastor and later became a pastor herself, ministering for 13 years before retiring.
She is a solo violinist and was a member of the Sandusky Symphony at Sandusky, Ohio.
Jean Fourman of Denver, Colo., moved to Wichita as a senior from Caldwell. Coming to a large city from a small town, she found Priest to be a good friend.
Fourman was the leading violinist in the school orchestra and played in the Wichita Youth Symphony. She taught music education after graduating from high school and played in symphonies wherever she and her husband lived.
Mary Lee (Scott) Esty, of Chevy Chase, Md., is two years younger than the other women. She grew up on a dairy farm on the edge of Wichita. She first started playing the violin as a fourth grader and played in a junior high orchestra. She followed Fourman as leading violinist in the Wichita East High School orchestra. She became a soloist in the Wichita Youth Symphony.
Esty became a social worker and is president of Neurotherapy Center of Washington, D.C.
"Kansas gave me optimism and fortitude," Esty said, "and music made me see you can do anything you want if you take it 'one note at a time.'"
Alexana Petroff Mason, of Dallas, Texas, moved to Wichita as a senior from Los Angeles. She said she was unhappy in Wichita until she met and became friends with fellow violinists.
She became a French instructor and married a man who was an international banker. They lived abroad for 12 years before moving to Dallas, where she plays in a string quartet and orchestra.
"I made my friends through my music," she said.
Sylvia (Striegel) Drake, of Thousand Oaks, Calif., grew up in Wichita. She was an airline stewardess for seven years and later married a military man. She is divorced and lives in San Francisco, where she works as a public relations employee at Amgen, a biotech company which develops drugs.
