About Martha

On March 19, 1944 I was born in Phillips, Texas, 50 miles NE of Amarillo. I grew up in the family of Patti, Will, Joel and Harry Kirkpatrick. My father worked in the Natural Gas department of Phillips Petroleum Company. My mother taught thirty or so piano students each week in our small house. From 7th grade through my junior year in high school, I studied piano with Hurshelene Journey-McCarty at Frank Phillips Junior College. I practiced diligently, performed regularly, and accompanied several instrumental soloists. By my senior year in high school I was teaching three piano students each week, but my curiosity about the wider world eclipsed my passion for music. I had fallen in love with Rice University when we took my brother Joel there in 1954. Eight years later I applied to Rice, even though it had no music department at that time. Majoring in history satisfied some of my curiosity. I also took many English literature courses and studied biology, anthropology, economics, French and German.

At Rice I fell in love with Steve Smith of Odessa. We graduated on June 4, 1966, married in the First Presbyterian Church of Borger a week later, and spent the summer working in Dallas. In September, we moved to Cambridge MA, where Steve attended Harvard Business School and I worked in a book publishing firm. In 1968 we moved to Washington, DC for Steve’s job in the Controller’s Office in the Pentagon. I got a job as a researcher for McKinsey & Company, management consultants. As my granddaughter Violet says, I was a Googler before there was a Google. Googling is still a habit.

Shortly before our daughter Lilli was born in 1971, I left McKinsey. During the previous thirteen months we had experienced several major life changes:  the death of my father; Steve joining a new business venture and my leaving the business world; moving from Georgetown to Arlington VA and having our first child. It was good to have a few months at home to adjust, but Lilli was an easy baby and soon I was ready for new ventures. Trading childcare with my friend Judith allowed time to visit DC’s wonderful art galleries and think seriously about music.

My McKinsey retirement fund yielded enough to buy a used Baldwin grand piano. After 5 years without a piano, I started practicing again with the windows open. A neighbor asked for lessons, so I took my first student since high school. I soon realized I needed to learn a lot more about teaching. We bought a house nearby and our son David was born in December 1973.  My musical activities became focused on children’s songs.

In 1975 I attended a presentation by Antal Dorati, Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra, about Kodaly and Bartok, with whom he had studied. He announced a two-week Kodaly workshop that summer at American University and introduced some intriguing Kodaly teachers. I signed up and learned about the Kodaly method of teaching children to sing, which I then employed with willing learners in my children’s nursery schools.

The joy of teaching children led me to enroll in under-graduate music pre-requisites at American University. I studied piano with Alan Mandel for three years and in February 1978, presented a solo recital. In June of that year my daughter Shelby was born. Though Shelby was a more challenging baby than her siblings, I kept the few students I had and joined Northern Virginia Music Teachers Association. Workshops with expert independent teachers– Louise Kupelian, Maryen Herrett, Marjorie Lee, and Suzanne Guy–showed me how to get better results with my students. Hiring a housekeeper in 1980 allowed me to expand my studio.

In the 1980s volunteer work began to claim my time and energy:  Taylor Elementary School, Cherrydale United Methodist Church, and Northern Virginia Music Teachers Association. Chairing committees for NVMTA and the Junior League of Northern Virginia sharpened my public speaking and organizational skills. What a challenge it was to balance family, teaching, and volunteer responsibilities!

Finally in 1992, with two kids in college, I was able to commit to graduate studies at the Benjamin T. Rome School of Music, Catholic University, where I studied with Thomas Mastroianni, Barbara Maris and Marvin Blickenstaff. Thirty years after my BA in History, I earned a Masters in Piano Pedagogy from Catholic in 1996, the same year Shelby graduated from the Potomac School.

For the next decade I served on committees of the Music Teachers National Association and was named an MTNA Foundation Fellow in 2007. I continued to work with MusicLink Foundation and taught many students who otherwise couldn’t have afforded lessons. In addition, it was a joy to teach English as a Second Language each week, and to participate in monthly meetings with two book groups, a Great Decisions Discussion Group and the Arlington Interfaith Council.

From 1977 to 2011, a total of thirty-five years, I taught hundreds of wonderful students in my piano studio in Arlington, Virginia. Upon retirement, my son helped me convert my studio website into this blog. Now I can write to my heart’s content. Grandchildren, travel, art, reading, and music allow me to live con brio. In December 2015 we sold our house in Arlington and now live full-time in Boynton Beach FL.

Steve and I now belong to the First Presbyterian Church of Delray Beach. Though I have been a faithful church-goer most of my life, I still struggle with doubts.  I keep rewriting what I believe about the world and my place in it. Here is my latest Credo:

I believe in God as the Spirit beyond our expanding Universe and in Jesus Christ, the prime example of the kindest, fairest, most courageous way to live. Christ taught us to love and forgive and by his Grace, we are forgiven. For daily guidance I rely on Micah 6:8: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God.”

I believe that we are united by the desire to live in harmony with nature and our fellow human beings. We must continually strive to be honest with ourselves and others and recognize that there are many paths to Eternal Truth.

I have faith that by God’s grace and through prayer, I can lead an honorable life and have a positive effect on other people.

Martha Smith, November 12, 2013

Update:  Inspired by a letter from Larry Bacow, President of Harvard University, dated  June 1, 2020, I add ten statements of belief that he listed. I agree with all of them:

1. I believe in the goodness of the people of this country—and in their resilience.
2. I believe that all of us, liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, whatever our race or ethnicity, want a better life for our children.
3. I believe that America should be a beacon of light to the rest of the world.
4. I believe that our strength as a nation is due in no small measure to our tradition of welcoming those who come to our shores in search of freedom and opportunity, individuals who repay us multiple times over through their hard work, creativity, and devotion to their new home.
5. I believe in the Constitution, the separation of powers, the First Amendment—especially the right to a free and independent press that holds those in power accountable, and to a free and independent judiciary.
6. I believe in the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws—for everyone, not just for those who look like me.
7. I believe that no person is above the law regardless of the office they hold or the uniform they wear. Those who break the law must be held accountable.
8. I believe that one measure of the justness of a society is how it treats its most vulnerable members.
9. I believe we must provide opportunity to those who may not encounter it on their own so that they may achieve their full potential.
10. I believe in the power of knowledge and ideas to change the world, of science and medicine to defeat disease, of the arts and humanities to illuminate the human condition.