Rancho Bernardo 92-12 months-previous stays active with artwork, new music and crafting

With her to start with book not long ago released, arranging and leading a new group singing team, producing a music about the Fourth of July and nevertheless portray, Ellie Hodge is not slowing down in her ninth ten years.

The Rancho Bernardo resident celebrated her 92nd birthday on July 21. A couple weeks just before that her children’s e book “The Tree and The Lady” turned out there for buy on Amazon.

The quick e book is published in the model of a poem. Advised from the standpoint of the tree, it recounts encounters with the woman who planted and prunes it and the birds who designed their nest and raised their infants amongst its branches.

Hodge claimed it was 1 of many shorter stories she has prepared. She selected it for publication mainly because of its rhythm, which she mentioned is a good deal like the tunes she writes.

The address illustration is of a woman in her property, hanging up her laundry between trees. The painting is just one a neighbor in Oxford, Ohio, created of her mom, Georgia Curridan, decades back. The e book, which is $10, is illustrated with black and white character pictures by Southern California photographer Maureen Chenard.

“I do not know what produced me want to generate,” Hodge stated about her lifelong hobby.

Close friend and neighbor Toni Kraft stated Hodge commenced chatting about publishing a e book two a long time ago as a legacy for her sons and grandchildren.

Kraft encouraged her to also illustrate the guide, but with so several tasks in the is effective, Hodge didn’t have time.

The Ohio native stated the arts have often been a aspect of her life. Her mother was an artist but lacked the time to go after it as a vocation. Having said that, she found time to train her daughter how to attract, beginning when she was about 4 several years outdated.

Her mothers and fathers also encouraged new music experiments for their 5 youngsters — 3 boys and two ladies. Hodge reported her father, Charles Curridan, formed a family members band with him on the piano and the little ones enjoying other devices. Hodge however has the baby-sizing saxophone she figured out to perform mainly because at the time a comprehensive-dimensions saxophone was also huge for her to hold.

Curridan had hopes of his daughter starting to be an additional Shirley Temple. So Ellie and her two more mature brothers also took tap dance classes from a teacher who came to their dwelling. The siblings had been often employed to perform as “The Curridan Cubs” at local community events with their father accompanying them on the piano, she stated.

When it came time for a job, Hodge in a natural way turned to tunes. She gained a bachelor’s in music training from Miami College in Oxford, Ohio. In the course of her school many years she analyzed in England for two months.

Most of her training job was in Ohio, although following relocating to San Diego in the early 1980s she also taught at campuses these as La Jolla Nation Day.

“When I was educating tunes in colleges, they ended up so crowded the tunes instructor had to press the piano to lessons due to the fact there was no new music home,” Hodge recalled about training in Ohio. “So I would discover out what the pupils had been learning and enhance the back of the piano with (corresponding) artwork.”

She also wrote songs to support them don’t forget their classes. Just one was about the Mississippi River. A further was dependent on the poem, “The New Colossus,” on the foundation of the Statue of Liberty. She nonetheless remembers the lyrics, where by she had all the pupils sing collectively and the place she broke the song up for the women and boys.

“I theorized that they could learn by singing a song,” Hodge stated. “The rhythm and melody with the phrases signify the mind doesn’t neglect it. It was critical to established lessons to music.”

For the reason that of her improvements in educating, Hodge obtained various recognitions in the course of her profession, which include a presidential award, explained her son, Grady Henderson. Hodge was invited to sign up for a Johns Hopkins College venture that became the early formation of the gifted schooling plan in the United States. It also led to her being invited to train audio for two years in Columbia, South America in the early 1980s.

“The folks there ended up so appreciative and extremely outgoing and awesome,” Hodge mentioned of her decades training all quality degrees in Columbia.

She began a band there, and the mother and father had been so content that they rented a symphony hall for the band to execute a live performance, she recalled.

Hodge said she has lived in lots of sites around her everyday living.

She moved to San Diego in 1984 to be near to loved ones associates, like her two sons, Grady and Rolan Henderson, their wives and youngsters. In the mid-1990s she moved to her property in Rancho Bernardo. Her late spouse, Alan Hodges, served in an underwater demolition workforce, the predecessor to the Navy SEALs, during Earth War II.

When her key career was in audio, Hodge, who minored in art through college or university, has also been commissioned to paint murals during San Diego. 1 was at Kraft’s previous Café Merlot restaurant in Bernardo Winery. It was an outside scene of the restaurant. Hodge continue to has the authentic on canvas at her household.

Between her other murals was just one with quite a few military planes at a barber shop in San Diego.

“I like to paint faces for the reason that I experience a confront offers a concept,” Hodge mentioned.

A single of her favorites is of a Indigenous American warrior. A different is of an more mature person with a young woman, which she reported displays him passing down knowledge to a young generation.

Hodge also enjoys portray scenic views mainly because of their architecture. Some of her favorites are of Balboa Park and the California missions, painted from memory or shots she took. Her chosen mediums are acrylic and oil paints.

A single of her most current endeavors is The Notables, a group she formed that will sing at street corners in the local community, especially all through the holidays, and at places these types of as retirement properties. The group has six singers, however Hodge would like much more as extended as they can commit to rehearsals. People fascinated in joining can get in touch with Kraft for particulars at 858-243-1046.

“I want to convey new music to persons,” Hodge reported.

Recognizing several vacations have music published about them, but a track precisely about the Fourth of July is not a single of them, Hodge decided to create just one. The Notables are understanding the song and Kraft, 1 of the singers, explained they will record it and some of Hodge’s other tracks for YouTube. The tracks incorporate one particular about package shipping that Kraft mentioned would make a very good jingle for a organization like FedEx or UPS.