{"id":3238,"date":"2017-01-03T15:51:55","date_gmt":"2017-01-03T15:51:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/?p=3238"},"modified":"2023-05-24T17:56:31","modified_gmt":"2023-05-24T17:56:31","slug":"alan-white-60-not-without-the-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/2017\/01\/03\/alan-white-60-not-without-the-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Alan White \u201960: Not Without the Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alan White \u201960 was seven years old and playing at his friend Jimmy Beers’\u00a0house in Jackson, MI, the first time he heard a piano played live.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was this beautiful noise from inside the house, and I walked into the room and his older sister, Natalie, was playing,\u201d White recalls. \u201cI was enchanted by the sound. I must have stood around with my mouth open, because her mother called mine and asked if she had ever considered buying a piano and having me take lessons.<\/p>\n

\u201cDad went out and bought an old upright piano\u2014it must have weighed a ton. But I was shy as a boy, and music became my\u00a0way of speaking.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019d had 13 years of formal music training by the time he came to Wabash.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to play for the Glee Club, but they already had an accompanist,\u201d White says. \u201cI used to sneak into the Chapel at night and play the organ.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though he attended dental school and practiced dentistry for decades, music remained essential to his life. He completed a master\u2019s in piano performance at Butler University, become the organist at St. Christopher\u2019s Episcopal Church in Carmel, IN, and played with the Carmel Symphony.<\/p>\n

He also began teaching piano, with a growing list of students.<\/p>\n

Then he and his wife, Barbara, purchased the Yount’s Mill Inn<\/a> and Garden in 2009 as a retirement project. Creating and tending the gardens, keeping up the grounds, welcoming guests to the bed and breakfast, and maintaining the other houses on the property took most of Alan\u2019s time. He practices daily and he plays piano for guests. (His musical acumen and his wife\u2019s work as an artist are signature appeals of the place.) \u00a0But he had to stop teaching, and the move away from the couple\u2019s former home in Noblesville ended other ways he practiced his musical vocation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a very difficult time, like there was a hole in my life,\u201d White says. The Inn, built in 1851 and including an historic mill right on Sugar Creek, may be the loveliest spot in West Central Indiana. But it had become all consuming.<\/p>\n

(Read a Lafayette Journal Courier<\/em> article about Phil Coons \u201967 and his visit to the Yount’s Mill\u00a0Inn here.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

White\u2019s solution was the same as it has been most of his life: music. Two years ago he began teaching piano in Carmel again. Then he purchased a small place near the campus where he could teach local students.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t take long for the word to get out\u2014Crawfordsville has a new passionate, patient, and excellent teacher who gets almost as much joy passing his skills along as he does playing. Watch the delight with which he plays\u2014as did the Class of 1960 at their 50th Reunion five years ago in the Chapel, when White finally got that chance to play the organ for his classmates\u2014and you know that\u2019s saying a lot.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlaying is wonderful, teaching is wonderful, and there\u2019s something there you just can\u2019t find anywhere else,\u201d says White. His life is back in balance. The Inn maintains his connection to history, and a new generation of Crawfordsville students are now part of his legacy, a way he may speak for years to come.<\/p>\n

\u2014Steve Charles<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alan White \u201960 was seven years old and playing at his friend Jimmy Beers’\u00a0house in Jackson, MI, the first time he heard a piano played live. \u201cThere was this beautiful noise from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":3239,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-class-notes","category-featured-videos","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2017\/01\/alan-and-myca-2-1024x683.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3238"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3266,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3238\/revisions\/3266"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}