Ruth Ellen Ziegler was born in 1926 in Michigan, the daughter of Oscar E. and Mabel L. (Rodeheaver) Ziegler. In 1930, she was living with her parents and older sister Elenore in Ferndale, Oakland County, Michigan. Her father was a solicitor for a tool manufacturing company. The 1940 census located the Ziegler family still residing in Ferndale, where her father was then doing clerical work for an automobile factory. Ruth lived with her parents and 2-year-old brother James in Ferndale, Oakland County, Michigan when the census was taken in 1950. Ruth, aged 23 years, was a music supervisor in a city school. Ruth was married before September 1953 to Raymond Neff, also a Michigan native. In 1940 Raymond had been working as a cab driver, and in 1950 he was an automobile mechanic. The Neffs had three children, Jane (born in 1959), James (born in 1960) and Jean (born in 1964).
I met Mrs. Neff in the fall of 1984, when I began the sixth grade at Avondale Middle School. She was our band teacher from sixth through eighth grades, and she knew both music and pre-teens inside and out. Somehow, she kept seemingly effortless order in the band room with about 50 kids holding noisemakers. She was a very small person, for an adult; she was shorter than pretty much everyone in our class. Mrs. Neff always wore matching bright-colored polyester smocks and pants, and she had a black wool dress with a ruffled hem that she would sport for concerts. She had a kind face that seemed more used to smiling than any other expression, and a short curly perm; her hair was beginning to go grey around the edges.
Sixth grade was the beginning of instrumental music for us, and Mrs. Neff had come around to all the elementary schools the previous spring to help us select band instruments. I had pretty much already decided I wanted to play the flute – my cousins Cathy and Mindy played the flute, so I had already had a chance to try it. I could already read music because I had taken piano lessons from the fourth grade, and most kids in our class who were taking band had some exposure to reading music from our elementary school music teacher, Mrs. Swigart, who had given us some instruction in rhythm at least. We knew quarter notes from eighth notes, half notes from whole notes, and so on, and it’s likely we had already learned the treble clef spaces and lines (FACE and Every Good Boy Does Fine). But the only instruments we had any experience with were our voices until that point, and we never read singing music, we had always just done listen-and-repeat. We learned to tap our feet to keep track of the beat; we learned how to hold our instruments when we were playing and when we were not. We learned when to take a breath and how to stretch our breath. Mrs. Neff taught us everything. Our first sixth grade concert was in December, and we played the old standby “winter” carols as any reference to specific religious holidays had been banned when we were in fourth grade. I remember the hooting, breathy Jolly Old Saint Nicholas void of any dynamic range – and we were all so proud! Mrs. Neff gradually taught us more over the three years she had with us, using whenever possible current popular music “arranged for band”. We played the theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Hill Street Blues theme, lots of holiday music (for our December concerts), and lots of patriotic tunes (for the Memorial Day parade). She had a wonderful sense of humor.
Every so often (perhaps once a marking period?) we would do chair auditions with our sections – every member of a section would go upstairs into the practice rooms and everyone else would close their eyes so no one could tell who was where, to play a prescribed snippet of music. Then Mrs. Neff, with occasional class participation, would decide who played it best, and assign chairs for the rest of the quarter based on that performance. We were allowed to challenge chairs at other times if we felt it was deserved. Kristi Roberts and I swapped first and second chairs for the entire three years we were in band together. She was one of the most popular crowd of kids, and we didn’t really mix out of band, but inside, she and I were inseparable. I think all three years we performed a duet together for solo & ensemble – neither of us wanted to do a solo, but together we were willing to do a duet.
In the spring Mrs. Neff’s heart turned to parade marching, and we would all have to find white pants and white shoes to wear with the school-issued purple blazers. Armies of mothers were asking us all “Why white? Why not black?” as black clothing was of course much easier to find – and keep clean – but Mrs. Neff always insisted on white. I don’t recall marching outside at school at all – did we really just figure it out on the day? – but we must have. The middle school band, with Mrs. Neff alongside, would march behind the high school band. And after a very short walk through Auburn Heights, then we had to stand at attention in the cemetery with the high school band members, while members of the VFW and American Legion would give speeches. Inevitably, in spite of all Mrs. Neff’s instructions, somebody would pass out, and only then would we be given permission to parade rest.
We had known Mrs. Neff for a few short months when, in January 1985, her husband Raymond passed away. From the Oakland Press, 16 January 1985: Neff, Raymond; 354 Lesdale, Troy; January 14, 1985; age 67; husband of Ruth; son of the late Ralph and Laura Cross; father of Mrs. Jane Rairden of West Virginia, James of Sterling Heights, Jean at home; 2 grandchildren. Funeral is 2 p.m. Thursday, Harold R. Davis Funeral Home, Auburn Hills. Rev. F. William Palmer officiating. Burial at White Chapel. Visitation 1 p.m. Thursday until time of funeral.
Mrs. Neff did not take enough time after her husband’s passing to return to work. There may not have been enough time in the world, and perhaps that was also her point of view. For weeks after her return, she would now and then lose her composure, begin weeping, step down from the podium in the middle of a piece, and walk into her office, where she would quietly close the door. After a few times, we learned to just finish the piece we were playing, and then we’d talk quietly or do homework in our seats until either she’d be able to return to the podium or class ended. No one ever took advantage of her grief to make a fuss or break the rules.
In my sixth-grade yearbook (and everyone else’s, too) Mrs. Neff wrote: Never B-sharp, Never B-flat, Always B-natural – but she wrote each note in music notation and signed it “R. Neff”. When I was in seventh grade, I went trick-or-treating with some friends in Mrs. Neff’s Troy neighborhood and we were all pleasantly surprised to see her answer the door and hand us candy. She was kind and gracious and greeted us all by name. I was happy in her class, all three years. She made band fun and interesting, and for all of us who had spent the previous five years of music instruction just trying not to be too embarrassed, Mrs. Neff freed us all just to play like it was our purpose.
I don’t remember doing it at all, but in the program for the December 1986 middle school concert, in addition to playing with the eighth-grade band, I was a piano accompanist for the choir’s number Do You Hear What I Hear? I remember playing that piece at several piano lesson Christmas parties at Sue Gore’s house (basically so I wouldn’t have to learn a new song every year), but I do not remember playing it at a middle school concert. If not for the proof on this piece of pink paper, I wouldn’t know it ever happened. Further proof, if I needed it, of the performance and social anxiety that has steered my course most of my life.
We all moved on to high school and I didn’t have room in my schedule for band. Until my senior year, when I joined the high school marching band (which was extracurricular, so I didn’t have to give up an academic subject to do it), I continued to take piano lessons outside school but didn’t take any music classes. When I was a freshman, Mrs. Neff’s son passed away. From the Oakland Press, 15 December 1987: “Neff, James C.; of Troy; December 14, 1987; age 27; son of Ruth and the late Raymond; brother of Jane Rairden and Jean Neff. Mr. Neff was a 1978 Graduate of Avondale High School. Funeral services Wednesday, 11 a.m. from the Harold R. Davis Funeral Home in Auburn Hills. Officiating Rev. F. William Palmer. Interment White Chapel Cemetery. Friends may call at the funeral home Tuesday, 7 to 9 p.m.
I was no longer at the middle school to see how she took it, but I’m sure she was devastated. She didn’t talk much about her own children in school, but she was very proud of them and attached to them. Losing her only son at such a young age would be horrible. Mrs. Neff retired the same year I graduated. Then a little over a year later, Mrs. Neff herself passed away. From the Oakland Press, 21 October 1992: “Neff, Ruth Ellen Ziegler; of Troy; October 18, 1992; age 66; mother of Jane Louise Neff Rairden, the late James Christian Neff and Jean Faith Neff; also 3 grandchildren, Brandy, Ellen and Joel Rairden; sister of Elenore Jobin. Mrs. Neff retired as a music teacher from Avondale Schools in 1991. Funeral services were held Tuesday, October 20 from the Harold R. Davis Funeral Home, Auburn Hills.
Teachers in general influence the lives of many people they never meet, through their students. I have found that the influence of music teachers in particular stretches even further. Because of Mrs. Neff and others like her in my life, I became a musician for life, and encouraged my children to become musicians for life, and they pass on that musicianship to others around them. There are thousands of musicians in the world today that wouldn’t be musicians without Ruth Neff. Never be sharp, never be flat, always be natural.
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