Dorothy DeLay

31 March, 1917
24 March, 2002

Juilliard School Violin Teacher

Dorothy DeLay, one of the world's most famous teachers of the violin and a mentor to two generations of players died at the age of 84 in Upper Nyack, New York, where she lived, of cancer.

Dorothy DeLay was not born in Neodesha, but she grew up there with her two sisters, Nellis and Louise DeLay, at 124 North Second Street in a little bungalow. Her father, Glenn DeLay,  was Superintendent of Schools in Neodesha for 22 years. Her mother, Cecile (Osborn) DeLay, taught piano. Both parents were strong influences in her life. Her sister, Louise DeLay Carlson, has been good enough to provide me with material for this article unavailable anywhere else.

Her mother, at the age of 8, was one of several little girls who accompanied Carry Nation around the state on her crusade against liquor. The little girls wore angel wings on their backs as they trooped after their formidable leader. Carry would invade the local barrooms to urge the patrons to take the pledge, and, if ignored, took her ax to the barroom shelves and mirrors. Her father, and the DeLay girl's grandfather, got wind of it and stripped the little angel of her wings.

When she was two her mother took her to see the King of Belgium as he passed through Kansas in 1919 on a whistle-stop train tour of the United States. She insisted on seeing the King too, and she was placed on the platform by her mother, where she put her little arms around the King's neck and hugged and kissed him.

At the age of three, DeLay was already reading. She started taking violin lessons when she was four and gave her first concert at a local church the following year. While attending NHS, she was found to have an IQ of 180 and was among a group of a hundred students nationwide selected for a survey by the Stanford-Binet research team that was gathering information to check the accuracy of the IQ ratings.

Kansas is a part of the world to which she felt strongly linked, and she has said that if the East Coast were to break off from the United States and sink into the ocean, she would go right back to the place where she was raised. "I would get a whole bunch of little tiny violins and a whole bunch of little tiny kids together, and we would build a violin school from the bottom up."

Mrs. DeLay began teaching violin at The Juilliard School in 1948. She has been described as the world's foremost teacher of the violin by such publications as the New York Times, France's Le Monde del al Musique, and South Africa's Die Voldsblad. At one time she considered the medical profession, and intended to have a career as a performer instead of a teacher.

I would call Miss DeLay, as she was known to her students, a perfectionist. I did not 'label' her an instructor because she was more of a guide to her students and I feel she would have been offended at the title. She felt strongly that instructing people to do things was entirely the wrong approach to learning a skill such as the violin. Set a goal, make a plan to achieve that goal, then get to work!

Miss DeLay was as well known for her easygoing, direct manner and her homey advice as she was for the demanding five-hour practice regimen she recommended in which full hours were devoted to technical basics, etudes, repertory pieces, concertos and works by Bach but also in which 10-minute breaks between hours were allowed.

Her technique apparently worked and worked well. Some of her former students include 14 of the Juilliard School teaching staff, Itzhak Perlman, Midori, Sarah Chang, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Nigel Kennedy, Gil Shaham, Shlomo Mintz and Cho-Liang Lin.

An excellent book, available for checkout at the library in Neodesha, is Teaching Genius: Dorothy DeLay and the Making of a Musician by Barbara Lourie Sand. It is also available for purchase from Amazon and others. This book should be required reading for every teacher in Neodesha, especially considering the terrible decline in the grade school national testing, and the fact that such poor instruction may result in the removal of Neodesha as the controller of the schools by the State of Kansas.

The Juilliard School of Music has sent me four
photographs of Dorothy DeLay.
Click the small picture to view them:

Further material on Dorothy DeLay (Newhouse) can be found:

	Article by Ruth A. Hanke, ICC Music Instructor, Independence, Kansas Scroll down to the article or click the link available on the page.
	Davidson Institute's The Power of Primitive Thinking
	Davidson Institute's Teaching Genius
	Juilliard Press Release on Death of Dorothy DeLay

The following is correspondence from her sister, Louise DeLay Carlson, NHS class of  1947, in Albuquerque, NM. I have edited portions for this article:

"You asked about particulars about my sister Dorothy's life. There is one picture that includes my other sister Nellis (DeLay) Harvout as well as Dottie, when they were very young and performed with a friend as the Stuyvesant Trio. (Dottie, violin, and Nellis, cello). (Our mother always said that her family was descended from Peter Stuyvesant -- hence, the name.) Dorothy was born in Medicine Lodge, Kansas, at our mother's family farm. At that time our Dad was getting his Master's degree at K.U., so Mom had gone to her home to have the baby.

Dorothy must have graduated from Neodesha about in 1933. She was born in 1917 and if I remember correctly, she graduated at the age of 16. (Possibly younger-Editor). We have a funny family story about that. Back in the '20's and early '30's, it was apparently a common custom for kids to skip grades, and both of my sisters did that, graduating at age 16. Anyway, Dorothy had completed all the requirements needed, except for what she would take in her senior year, by age 15. My parents felt that was much too young to graduate and leave home for college, so Dad gave Dottie very firm instructions about not enrolling in one of the required graduation courses, so that she wouldn't be tempted to leave Neodesha sooner. Well, when she got to the High School to enroll, she thought she'd pull a fast one and signed up for that course anyway. She just happened to run into Dad while she was there, and he asked to see what her classes were. When he discovered what she had done, he marched her all around and made her enroll all over again, dropping the one course she needed to complete graduation!! My other sister Nellis was 2 years younger and graduated 2 years after Dorothy.

Dorothy's husband Edward (Eddie) Newhouse died about November 10th of this year. (Ed: Mr. Newhouse was a Proletarian Novelist and New Yorker Short Story Writer. One of his best known works was used for the movie Shadow In The Sky).

My parents had met when attending college in Emporia, Kansas, where Dad's family was living at the time. When first married they lived in Kiowa, Kansas, where Dad of Superintendent of Schools. At some point Dad when back to school for a year to get his master's from K.U. Early on, he was Supt. of Schools at Syracuse, Kansas, where Nellis was born. I remember hearing about that period of time when the flu epidemic was so bad all across the U.S., and about how Dad had to close down all the Syracuse schools when it got so bad. After Syracuse the family moved to Cherryvale, Kansas, where Dorothy started school, I believe. And I think it must have been around 1923 when they moved to Neodesha and were there until October of 1945. They had neighbors in Cherryvale who moved to Neody before our family -- so, our parents asked these friends about a home in their neighborhood and that's how we ended up at 124 No. Second Street (one block north of the highway, Main Street).  Mom gave piano lessons, and a few violin lessons, during the entire time of living in Neodesha.

Our little brick bungalow is still there, at the end of the block, -- at least, it still was about 5 years ago, last time I was there. And it's pretty amazing to me that each block on either side of that house is pretty much the same as it was when we left in 1945!

During those years of Dad's superintendency, towards the end, he served on the state Kansas School Board and would drive back and forth to Topeka for meetings. When, after the war, Dad was offered the job of Director of Curriculum for all of the Kansas state schools, we moved to Topeka -- but by then both of my sisters were long gone and were married with children (in New York). this was really the culmination of his career and he loved this job. At that time the study of aviation was a brand new item, and Dad spent a lot of time incorporating that into the Kansas colleges.

After we left Neodesha George Caldwell became the Supt. of Schools. He had been Principal at the High School before that. And replacing George, if I remember correctly, was Bob McCollom (sp?), who had been the football coach at the High School. I think he may have continued coaching, as well.

It's interesting that you lived on Mill Street. (Ed: 145 Mill, originally built to house the nurses for the hospital across the street) I remember the Mill Street bridge very well. And also a dairy that was close to the east end of the hospital. I can remember sometimes carrying an empty milk bottle to that dairy and bringing a new one home! That must have been before milk deliveries. I used to roller skate to school all the time (South School) and my route was usually all along 2nd Street until I reached Mill Street, then turned to follow that one until turning to reach the school."

The above information has no guarantee of accuracy, and is provided solely as a source of entertainment.
If you have any information you would like to add, or suggestions for other notable Neodeshan's, send me email to the address below
kerry@neodygrads.com