The Mary Deming Memorial Financial Aid Fund honors the legacy of a passionate amateur musician and audience member by helping dedicated musicians access quality education and opportunities they might not otherwise have. Funded by community contributions, this scholarship removes financial barriers and helps shape the future of music.

Mary Deming, the mother of co-founder, Betsy Kobayashi, played piano and sang in choruses. In her later years she took up the cello. She encouraged all her four children to play music, and came to as many of their concerts and their students’ concerts as she could, all over the world.

From Betsy to Pineland Suzuki School students and families: My mother passed from this world to the next on September 13, 2023. We will miss her smiling, encouraging presence at concerts. She enjoyed your music so much. Thank you for your cards, sweet thoughts, flowers, hugs, and the beautiful music at her memorial service. While looking among her papers, I realized I did not fathom her great industriousness! As a board member of the Danbury (CT) “Little Symphony”, where my brother and I played, she wrote, “We are constantly amazed at the Little Symphony graduates and the musical lives they have been inspired to lead... Never under- estimate the far-reaching impact of our youth programs and John Burnett’s (our teacher and conductor) devotion to and love of good music.” Wow! Her message carries over 50 years later to PSS graduates and their caring, devoted teachers who love teaching music to children!

A few stories of Mary and Pineland:

At the Celebrating Orchestras in Maine Benefit Concert in 2016, she was moved to tears by Anne McKee’s playing of Mendelssohn violin concerto with the orchestra. She often talked about that concert with her friends, and that whole year, every time she talked about it, she was again moved to tears.

At the Peace Through Music Benefit Concert in 2018, she sat in the audience before the concert began, and said to the young girl sitting next to her, “What a wonderful picture this is on the program. I wonder who created it.” The girl she spoke to, Charlotte Saxl, was the artist! Charlotte became a special young friend and when Charlotte came for a lesson on Saturday morning, often Mom came up to listen.

At the Balsam House, where she lived for the last two years of her life, to the delight of staff and other residents, she was always singing. One of my young students, too shy to play for a big audience, played her Twinkle graduation in my mom’s room. It was the day before her 99th birthday, and of course, mom was just overjoyed! After the graduation, we all sang happy birthday to her, and after finishing, she sang right back, “Oh thank you, I’m sure…for the happy birthday you sang to me, happy birthday I’m sure.”

At the last Augusta Symphony concert she attended, she was so disturbed by the thought that someone had stolen her purse, and that her husband was waiting outside (he had died ten years earlier), she nearly shouted. Barbara Moody, mother of alumni student Jon Moody, tried to calm her, But once the music started, she was entranced and at peace.