| The Violin Maker
Virginia had a great passion in life, and that passion was for classical
music. She had a day job all right, and was pretty good at it, but nothing came close to
her musical passion.
She became quite accomplished on both the cello and the viola, but it
wasn't enough for her to play the instruments.
After a while, Virginia decided to try her hand at make the instruments.
To everyone's surprise, even her own, she did very well. Her reputation
spread, and even the famous violinist Isaac Stern purchased and frequently played a violin
Virginia had made.
Virginia was an absolute perfectionist. Everything about her instruments
had to be just right or she'd scrap the whole thing and start over. The construction had
to be perfect, the strings just so, right down to the kind of wood. She'd search all over
for the perfect wood.
Virginia started one viola and finished the front part of the frame, but
she wasn't satisfied with the wood for the back.
So she started looking around -- and looking and looking.
Where did she finally find a piece of wood she thought was perfect? Well, it was a
shelf inside a phone booth in
New York City! This was at a time when phone booths still had nice shelves to hold the
phone books.
So Virginia called the phone company and asked if she could buy the shelf
out of the booth. They thought she was crazy, of course, and told her no. She made
outrageous offers of money for that little piece of wood, but the phone company wouldn't
budge.
Well, she had to have that piece of wood, so one night Virginia and a
friend came up with a plan to steal the shelf out of the phone booth. She got it out all
right, but, being a good citizen, she'd replaced it with another piece of wood. But then
she ran into problems: the new piece wasn't the right size! It didn't fit into the phone
booth.
Virginia and her friend became a little frantic, for they knew they had to
replace that shelf. There was a hospital across the street from the booth, and they took
the wood there to a restroom where Virginia's friend took a saw and started to fix the new
shelf.
Virginia stood guard, and when a nurse stopped and asked her what all the
racket was in the restroom in the middle of the night, Virginia mumbled something about it
being the only time workmen could get in there!
Well, they finally replaced the shelf, the phone company never knew
what happened, and Virginia finished her viola.
By all accounts it was one of the finest instruments she'd ever made.
Virginia's name isn't remembered today for her being a great musician or
instrument maker, even though she was both. But her name does live on.
People with children have heard Virginia's name mentioned in the delivery
room. That's right! Virginia was a doctor. It's a little known fact that the wonderful
musician and physician created a system for evaluation newborn babies to see if they
needed special medical attention. It's probably saved the lives of millions of babies.
And it bears her name -- the Apgar Score, created by
Dr. Virginia Apgar.
from Extraordinary Women
by Chaz Allen
| Goddesses archetypes abound in these true stories of
legendary American women and the things they did to make this country great. Don't forget
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