Vera took piano lessons before fourth grade, as was a requirement in our family back then. But at the beginning of fourth grade, Vera started learning to play the flute. Dad helped her, in fact he learned right a long with her. He’d play a few notes and then she would play a few notes. She played very well and by sixth grade, Mr. Lobrot, found an oboe that the Granite School District had. Actually he had two oboes. One for Vera and one for another sixth grader, Rachelle. Throughout sixth grade they practiced on these oboes and got better and better. By seventh grade they were good enough to go directly into the Concert Band at Bonneville Junior High School, something heretofore that only ninth grade students and occasionally eighth grade students had been allowed into.
Eventually Vera started taking lessons from an oboe teacher named John Bush. Since I had just started driving it was usually my assignment to take her there to her lesson at his home. I would wait out in the car while she went in. Then she took lessons from another teacher named Gary Post who owned a music store called the Woods and Brass Shop. I took Vera directly to his store. Here Vera learned to tie her own oboe reeds, a skill that every good oboist needed to know. Vera got better and better. By the time she was ready for high school Vera had gotten in the Granite Youth Symphony. I got in the group at the same time and we went on a two week tour to Canada. The next fall Vera started high school and it was my senior year at Cottonwood High School. Vera was also taking oboe lessons from a member of the Utah Symphony, Jerry Clarke. In college she took lessons from yet another Utah Symphony oboist, Darrel Stubbs.
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