It's been said that every life is a story.
This story is about a lost girl who grew up alone in a series of boarding schools in the Deep South, but whose lust for life led her into adventures that made up a life she might have only dreamed of.
We all have seminal events in our youth that set us on a path. For Johanna Dordick (born Elizabeth Patricia Robinson), that event occurred around 1950 in Thomasville, Georgia when a brief concert by a young contralto was presented in the school auditorium.
And for the first time, fifteen-year-old Elizabeth heard classical music. What the young woman sang was unimportant - it was the flood of sound, the expressiveness, the singer's sheer joy in the act of singing that lifted the impressionable young girl into another world. How could anyone do that? |
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Later that day Elizabeth went to the library that fatefully included an audio room where she could listen to recordings. She soon discovered the art of singers like Marian Anderson and Lily Pons. She discovered the sounds of Strauss and Wagner, Bartok and Brahms. And for weeks she gorged herself until she began to burst into song, singing along with the recordings. Each day took on a new meaning, and brought her a new sense of joy.
The discovery of that music transformed a young girl's loneliness and inspired her to reach out to life. Everything seemed possible. For Elizabeth, life was now becoming a great adventure. |
