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164 September–October 2013
tallahasseeMagazine.com
Filling a need
Martha Herring grew up just up the road in Calvary, Ga., attending schools in nearby Cairo. After high school, she moved to Macon to attend Wesleyan College, a historic Methodist-affiliated women’s college known for small classes and a strong focus on students. Martha double-majored in piano and organ and in Christian education. After graduation, she married Ron Stubbs and taught music for two years while the Air Force veteran finished his bachelor’s degree at the University of Alabama. In one of those happy quirks of fate, the job for Ron they thought was bringing them to Tallahassee was replaced with a better one, with the State University System. When she and Ron decided to create the foundation, they turned to the network of friends they had made along the way to help them bring the gift of music education to as many people as possible. The late educator and administrator Scott Dailey had sent his children to the Stubbs Center for music lessons, and he served on the foundation’s first board of directors in the mid to late 1990s. One of his sons, Leon County Commissioner John Dailey, shares his late father’s high regard for the Stubbses. “I think Martha and Ron do amazing things for this community, in regards to music education and music appreciation,” said Dailey, who took piano lessons from Martha Stubbs for six or seven years as a child, as did his sister, Scottie. Asked to describe Martha in one word, at first he wasn’t sure there was one word that could capture her adequately. Then, he settled on “gifted.” “She’s a gifted musician, a gifted administrator, a gifted teacher, a gifted wife, a gifted mother,” he said. “She is simply a gifted individual.”