Linda Ross
(Shelby Miller samiller@vicad.com)
Victoria Advocate
[Victoria, Texas]
Linda Grant Ross was a little girl in the 1950s when she first set eyes on a piano.
At
the time, her mother was a cook for Myrtle Braman, who lived at 206 W.
Stayton St., which is today a historic Victoria home. Ross’ father also
worked for the Bramans as a chauffeur, and the couple occasionally
brought their children to the home.
“We
lived in the country and Mom and Dad would go to work in town, so it
was a real treat to go with them,” Ross, 69, remembered.
One
of reasons she enjoyed visiting the Braman home, from which she can
still recall the sweet pungency of magnolias, was the opportunity to
play the old piano.
“Mrs.
Braman didn’t fuss,” Ross recalled, remembering the first time she
banged loudly on the upright’s keys as a curious 5-year-old. “She was
happy I was playing because it was just sitting there.”
As
Ross grew a few years older, the late Braman, who was a retired teacher
and blind, paid for the young prodigy to take piano lessons at St.
Mary’s Catholic Church, which then cost 75 cents a lesson.
Before
Ross was 10 years old, she was playing at Mt. Nebo Baptist Church for
Bible study classes, then the worship choir, with many adults realizing
she had a gift for the keys.
“She
had such a talent, a God-given talent, and it was obvious she was
something special,” said Laura Sanders, who was a teenager at Mt. Nebo
when she first remembers the 9-year-old Ross performing at the church.
“There’s nothing she can’t play.”
Braman’s
investment in those childhood lessons were the catalyst of a lifelong
love of music and piano performance in the African-American churches in
South Texas, where today she’s known as one of the best.
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