It was in Sonora that Orville decided to bring music back into his life and his family life. “So, I told my wife I was going to get a mandolin because I want some music out here when my sister’s out here. So, I got one. It was the old type, the flat mound. Course most of them had a bowl when I studied on it. But now about all of them are flat ones. So, I got to practicing on and played some of the old tunes that I had and did pretty well.”
“Then finally a family friend of mine I knew pretty well, and he had a violin. He challenged me that I couldn’t make one, and he was already making one. So, I said, Is that so? He said, yes. I didn’t say anything, so I began to get busy and finally made one. It wasn’t too good a violin as to be expected. But at any rate, after I made it, and began to practice on it—the fingering’s the same for the violin. Why I decided I would study the violin. So finally, I got a hold of Mrs. Gus Miller of San Angelo, and she was an excellent violin instructor. I played on that for about a year, close to it.” O.G.B.
A recollection by Kenneth Babcock: “My father loved playing the violin. He drove sixty-six miles to San Angelo about once a week to take violin lessons from Mrs. Miller.”
About Mrs. Miller:
“She got after me and said, “I wish you would hurry up and get rid of that violin there. You’ve having too much trouble with intonations.” So, I agreed that I’d take one that she gets for me.”
“So, she went to Lyonal Healy and finally a violin come, and it was a dandy. Schonfelder (German violin). So, I went to work in earnest, and I studied for eight years. I played in the first San Angelo orchestra they ever had.” O.G.B.
The San Angelo Symphony, Orville seated third from right.
Eventually, Orville stopped playing the violin due to his deafness. Prior to that, his daughter, Edith May, played the violin and traveled with her father to San Angelo for lessons once a week. After her best friend, Peggy, died of polio when they were both just thirteen, Edith May never had to take violin again.
As she said in later years, “I was probably a huge disappointment to my father, because I didn’t play the violin.” Instead, she played the piano and taught herself to play “Boogie Woogie” which her father hated. She remembers how he used to slam the door shut when she would pound out the keys. “Teenagers!!”
The San Angelo Symphony Society was initially organized in July 1949. The first concert was conducted by Dr. Eric Sorantin of San Antonio in November 1949. Today the San Angelo Symphony continues to provide outstanding entertainment to the citizens of the Concho Valley. West Texans can relate to this quote from German author Berthold Aurebach (1864): “Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”
Orville was an exceptional record keeper. Here is a portion of his ledger for violin payments along with two checks dated July 6, 1925, and February 23, 1926, which was just two days after the birth of Edith May!
