C O V E R
S T O R Y
S I D E B A R
Mary Jo Leahey (1916-2011): She Lived for the Music By Geoffrey Douglas
Mary Jo Leahey ’37 helped 2,000 students pursue their musical dreams.
30
f the thousands of benefactors who have contributed over the years to the life of this University, there are probably none whose generosity has touched more lives, as personally or directly, as Mary Jo Leahey ’37. It may have been the memory of the opportunity she once passed up herself, decades ago, as a student—a seven-year contract with 20th Century Fox—to return to Lowell and marry her sweetheart. Or it may have just been her love of music. Whatever the reason, much of her life and wealth would be dedicated to a single cause: the right of every boy and girl who loves music as she had, and was willing to work for it, to have the means to the same opportunity. “She wasn’t just a benefactor, one of those who just gives and walks away,” says Debra-Nicole Huber ’89, who, for the past 17 years, has served as executive director of the Mary Jo Leahey Symphonic Band Camp, an annual, residential, weeklong summer instructional camp for high-school music students, based on the UMass Lowell campus—which, over the years, has afforded nearly 2,000 of them the chance to pursue their musical dreams. “She talked with the students,” Huber says. “She would want to know, from me, how things were going, where the students were coming from, if we were getting them the highest-possible level of instruction we could, all those sorts of things. She cared, she really, really cared. She loved music, and she loved teaching—and that’s something we had in common. It was a beautiful partnership.”
O
UMASS LOWELL MAGAZINE S P R I N G 2 0 1 2
Leahey: singer, teacher, mentor, visionary, philanthropist—and member of the Lowell State Teachers College class of 1937, from which she earned her bachelor’s degree in music—died in late November at her home in Florida. She was 95. The Band Camp, which began with 53 students in 1997 and is now enrolling 130, is not the only legacy of Leahey’s generosity. Other beneficiaries over the years include the University’s Center for the Arts, the UMass Lowell String Project and the Chancellor’s Educational Excellence Fund for Student Scholarships. Not long before her death last year, she was honored, as one of just 11 benefactors, as a member of the University’s newly formed Circle of Distinction. “Mary Jo was a very special, really beautiful person,” says Chancellor Marty Meehan. “Her generosity continues to provide for the educational experience of young people from diverse backgrounds. It’s a wonderful legacy.” But the Band Camp was her trademark. And her passion. Ever since her student days in the 1930s, and the war-time years that followed when she sang and danced for the wounded troops, and the years later, on Martha’s Vineyard, as music supervisor of the island’s public schools— it was always the music that drove her. “It was her inspiration,” says Huber. “Her passion for it was contagious. At the same time, though, she never lost her dignity. Or her capacity to love, to reach out. She was a remarkable lady. A true role model. I will miss her very much.” A memorial is planned: on July 21, in the finale concert on the final day of this year’s Band Camp, the orchestra will feature a world premiere of “Sounds of Courage” by Robert W. Smith, a composition based on the life of Amelia Earhart. It will be dedicated to the memory of Mary Jo Leahey, the camp’s visionary founder.