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Her lifelong love of the piano finds an audience

By ANDREW SKERRITT
Published September 18, 2007

Nancy Anderson, 89, plays for the last few people waiting for rides after lunch at the Pasco Senior Center. Tony Moretti, 87 and Betty Moretti, 85, dance in the background.
	[David Degner | Times]

It's nearly noon at the Land O'Lakes senior center and folks are finishing lunch, others are clearing the tables, some are just sitting and listening. At the piano sits Nancy Anderson, her nimble fingers dancing over the keys, as notes from When Irish Eyes Are Smiling fill the room.

Since she first came to the Pasco County senior center a year ago, Anderson's lunch time serenade has provided a musical dessert for the seniors and staff. It's as if the piano lessons she learned from a Catholic nun more than 70 years ago had all been in preparation for these impromptu concerts, the musical run of her life. Her audience responds with appreciation: applause, words of thanks, sometimes dancing.

"If I can play the piano and entertain somebody," she said, "then I can be of some help. That's what it's all about."

I first heard Anderson play when I visited the center on Wisteria Drive this spring. As I sat and talked to another senior, her piano music filled the room, wrapping us in a melodic embrace. I returned to hear more.

Anderson turns 90 this Saturday but still plays with the style and verve of a young, classically trained concert pianist. No arthritis cramps her fingers as she plays Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C sharp minor.

She played it for her eighth-grade recital and never forgot.

"Even if I make a lot of mistakes, I keep going," she said.

Professional or amateur, every musician hits a bad key now and then. Her formal musical education lasted just three terms in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades at St. Francis Xavier Catholic school in Pittsburgh. Her music teacher was Sister Mary Ida, a nun with the Sisters of Mercy. After grade school, Anderson never had another piano lesson.

Her parents couldn't afford to buy sheet music, so Nancy, a child of the Depression, learned to play the popular songs of the '30s by ear. Later, she played them on the second-hand piano her parents bought.

Anderson has lived a typical American life. After high school she worked for the Federal Candy Co. for 10 bucks a week. She was a secretary with Pittsburgh Plate Glass when she met Bob Anderson, a General Motors traveling parts salesman from Iowa, on a blind date.

Bob was on the road six days a week; he usually left home on Sunday evenings and returned in time for dinner on Friday.

So Nancy was left to raise their nine children on her own, with help from her mom and an aunt. But daughter Rose Anderson, the seventh child, remembers there was always piano music at the house.

Nancy bought a second-hand piano and kept playing Rachmaninoff's Prelude. When Bob was at home, he loved to sing I'll seeyou in my dreams in that rich deep voice as she accompanied him.

She and Bob brought the piano along when they moved to Florida in the '80s. Bob died in 1994 but Anderson still has that second-hand piano in her Land O'Lakes condo.

"She plays every day," said Rose, one of Anderson's six daughters living in Florida. "Sometimes once a day, sometimes three times. It makes her happy."

And it keeps her prepared. She has an eager audience to please.

Andrew Skerritt can be reached at 813 909-4602 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 4602. His e-mail address is askerritt@sptimes.com.

[Last modified September 17, 2007, 20:17:57]