NOTE: This excellent article was written by ELIZABETH SIMPSON in THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT, May 1, 2002.
The article was not online and we do not have the title or the photos.
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Gloria Lenhoff is 47 years old and still needs help with shoestrings and buttons, making change and crossing the street. But when she straps on a 25-pound accordion and steps on stage, she knows what to do. The curly-haired woman, her fingers dancing over keys and buttons, can play 2,000 songs -- from beer-barrel polkas to Italian sonatas, from Johann Sebastian Bach to Elvis Presley. She also sings as an operatic soprano, and shifts easily from English to 29 other languages. She recently performed at a Virginia Beach conference on disabilities, stirring people to tears with "Ave Maria" -- she knows versions by three different composers -- then springing into "Rock Around the Clock". This woman, with an IQ of 55, can't read a note of music, but on stage, she can rifle through mental catalogs of lyrics that she picked up in childhood. She zeroes in on a note with absolute pitch -- a rare skill even among musicians -- but struggles to remember the name of that famous place she performed a year ago.
"Remember?" prompts Howard Lenhoff, her father. "In Washington?"
"Ummm...."
"Very famous place."
"Ummmm..."
"The Kennedy Center!"
"Oh, yes," she responds, not particularly impressed with the fact. "The Kennedy."
It's a mystery that her parents have puzzled over, and celebrated, for the past four decades. At first, they thought the musical eccentricities and language dexterity in a girl who couldn't add or tie her shoes were pure Gloria, with a measure of parental pushiness. But then one day in 1988, after Gloria was featured in a PBS television documentary called "Bravo Gloria," they received phone calls from strangers. Your daughter, they were told, has Williams syndrome. At first, Howard and Sylvia Lenhoff didn't think much about it. After all, Gloria was 34 by then, and they had long since abandoned pinning down her disability beyond mental retardation. But when they went to a function attended by other people with Williams syndrome, they were struck by the similarities: people of all ages with the same pixie-like features; smallish heads; broad foreheads; prominent lips and wide mouths; the same extreme friendliness -- sometimes to a fault; ("They'll lie if they think that will make you happy," Howard says.) the same hoarse, deep voice; the lack of shyness; the difficulty with spatial relationships; and the rich vocabulary that gives them so-called "cocktail party personalities." The syndrome had not even been identified until six years after Gloria was born, and was only now being diagnosed in the 1 in 20,000 children born with the chromosomal defect. Over the next few years, Howard noticed another peculiarity of the population. Many of them had a flair for music.
"What's the name of the song you learned when you first started voice lessons?" asks her father.
" 'Come Lovely May with Blossoms,' " Gloria says without missing a beat.
The night before her performance in Virginia Beach, she perches on a hotel bed and talks a little about her musical career, with a bit of prompting from her father. Many of her answers have a sense of being filed in her mind and pulled out at proper moments. But she delivers them with grace and feeling.
"What do you like about performing?"
"I like to spread joy and happiness to people. That's how I was brought up. God gave me a wonderful gift and I'm so, so lucky. I never want to give it up."
"You don't like the applause, Gloria?" her father asks, with a teasing smile.
"I love it."
"You don't like standing ovations?" he says, his eyebrows arching.
"I do too!"
The father and daughter are like a vaudeville act -- all smiles and twinkling eyes and friendly repartee.
"What other kinds of things do you like to do?"
"I love singing opera," she says.
"You don't like shopping?" her father asks.
"I love to go shopping. Sometimes if I see something I like, I'll get it. Sometimes I like to buy books about childbirth and opera. And lipstick or something like that, to make me feel special."
The Lenhoffs have come to Virginia Beach from Mississippi for "Maximizing Potentials", a conference for people who work with the disabled. After years of living with her parents in California, Gloria moved last year to the Baddour Center, a residential community of mentally retarded people in Senatobia, Miss. She takes music lessons -- voice, accordion and gospel every week -- and performs in a traveling choir called "The Miracles" and a musical duo called "The Bravos". Three or four times a year she also still travels with her parents, who live in nearby Oxford, to solo performances -- mostly at conferences about disabilities. As the Lenhoffs grow older, they want Gloria to learn to live more independently to prepare her for when they're no longer around. "That's why we're trying this place," says Howard, who's 73. "She has to learn how to live without her parents interrupting her all the time like I'm doing right now." Gloria, ever eager to please, says, "But I don't mind that."
It was her parents, after all, who first noted her musical gift and nurtured it. Her mother could always find her by following the sound of nursery rhyme songs or musical toys she was given as a child. So at 11, they signed her up for voice lessons. It didn't go well in the beginning because teachers wanted her to learn theory and Gloria couldn't sit still for that. Then, Sylvia found someone who had taught women prisoners. "If she can teach prisoners, maybe she can teach Gloria," Sylvia thought. And she did, not by teaching Gloria notes and scales, but by allowing her to mimic her. Songs Gloria learned from her teacher -- she remembered, words, notes, rhythms and all. Her attention span would last minutes on a school problem but hours on music. She also had a knack for picking up languages. She learned Yiddish from her grandmother, German from a neighbor and Spanish from a Mexican friend. When she sang "Song of Solomon" at her Bat Mitzvah, "everyone was in disbelief," her mother says. She picked up a full-size accordion -- a gift from her parents -- and played it on the spot -- not proficiently, but well enough to impress her family. Soon, she was playing for family gatherings and garden clubs. As more and more people heard about this "musical savant", she was invited to sing with symphonies and operas. She's performed in Spain, Israel and England, with Aerosmith musicians and the L.A. Opera. But, it's always with the backdrop of having a disability, and that grates on her father's nerves. "She's a musician in her own right," he says. "She should be recognized for that."
In her hotel room on the day of her April 19 performance, Gloria slips into an elegant black pants-suit dress, with a fitted black bodice. Then she puts on a sparkling gold shirt and begins to button it. But she's off by one buttonhole, her mother points out. "Uh-uh, Gloria, try again." She does, then asks for help with the buttons on her cuffs. Then her mom reminds her to comb her hair. Gloria stands in the middle of the room doing so, and Sylvia says, "Why don't you use the mirror?" Then, down in the conference room, Gloria sees John Koontz, a local accordion aficionado who's lending Gloria an instrument for the performance. She only met him the night before, but now claps her hands and gives John and his wife a hug. "I'm so glad you're here," she says. She walks over to her father, as if for affirmation. He smiles and nods, then pats the chair next to him for her to sit. Two local children with Williams syndrome also are here to see her perform. Five-year-old Blair McLaren shows the same friendly inclination as Gloria, climbing into her lap to give her a hug.
"Are you going to sing?" asks another child with Williams, 11-year-old Hunter Myers.
"Yes", Gloria says.
"What song?" he asks.
"I'll surprise you", she says.
A slide of the 7th chromosome flashes up on a screen as conference participants settle into their seats. "I'm obliged to show you this slide or I'll lose my job", jokes Howard. Besides being "Gloria's roadie", Howard Lenhoff is a biochemist by trade, a professor emeritus from the University of California at Irvine. Once he found out Gloria had Williams syndrome, he asked researchers to study the musical aspect of people with Williams. Finally someone said, "You're a scientist, why don't you?" And so he did. People with Williams syndrome, he found, were 10 times as likely as the general public to have perfect pitch, which means they can recognize, name and produce the pitch of a musical note. Howard theorizes that some of the 20 damaged genes on the 7th chromosome are at play. Those genes impair visual and spatial skills, but also bestow some special gifts. One is a hypersensitivity to sound. "They'll see a balloon and cover their ears in anticipation", Howard says. That sensitivity allows them to pick up on language inflections and zero in on musical notes. For most people, the small window of opportunity to develop this potential closes when the brain begins to focus on other tasks. Not so for those with Williams syndrome. "The window gets stuck", Howard says. "When someone comes up to me and says, 'My child is 6, is this a good time to give him music lessons?' I say, 'The perfect time.' Someone else says 'My daughter is 17, is this a good age?' Oh yes, 17 is just right. Someone else says their son is 40, is it a good time? Stupendous time, sign him up."
Finally, Gloria steps onto the stage, her black patent leather shoes tapping confidently to the center. "Are you nervous?" Howard asks her.
"No, why would I be nervous?" she says.
She begins with a popular tune, "Greatest Love of All", as her father retreats to a chair on the back of the stage. "I believe the children are the future, teach them well and let them lead the way... " she sings. The audience applauds spontaneously in the middle of some songs, at particularly poignant moments. Blair leaves her mother's side, and jumps up next to Gloria. Other stage parents might have shooed her away, but Howard rises from his chair, grasps the little girl's hands, and spins her into a dance. Gloria, meanwhile, shifts into operatic mode -- singing, "Oh Mio Babino Caro" (Oh, My Dear Father) by Puccini and then, "Addio del Passato" by Verdi. "This is one of my favorite arias," she says. "I'm going to sing it for you, and I hope you'll enjoy it." Later, she snaps her fingers and shakes her shoulders when she sings "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay."
It is Howard's hope that Gloria will someday make a living at music, instead of stuffing envelopes in a sheltered workshop like she does now. But he can't seem to break her out of the disability circuit. "That's my last major fight." By the end of the performance, people in the audience are crying and standing up for ovations. "Eat your heart out, Whitney Houston!" Howard says. Gloria beams, occasionally glancing at her mother, who blows her kisses from the audience.
"I love you all", Gloria calls out between bows. "And don't forget that!"
