Marian Anderson

Marian Anderson (http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/ande-mar.htm)

My hero is Marian Anderson; she was born on February 27, 1897 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her parents' names were John and Anna Anderson. She also had two sisters, Alyse and Ethel. When she was a young girl, she went to the Union Baptist Church every Sunday. When she was six, she joined the Junior Choir. She was often told by her choir teacher to quiet down, because she would drown the other children out, but one time her loudness paid off. She and her friend were asked to sing a duet together and it went so well that they were asked to sing it for the Sunday worship services.

Later on she went to sing on tour in Europe, and while she was on tour she met the famous conductor Arturo Toscanini, and he told her that a voice like hers was one that you heard every hundred years. When she arrived back in the United States, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt invited Marian to come sing for them in Washington, D.C. She sang for hundreds of people in front of the Lincoln Memorial Building. She was also the first black soloist to sing in the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.

Why she is heroic, at least in my eyes, is because she overcame adversity and prejudice. She kept going even after she was rejected from schools, choirs, and concert halls. She did all she could to further educate herself in music. For example, when she was a little girl, she scrounged four dollars off the street to buy a beat up violin, and taught herself how to play it, and she also taught herself how to play the piano. She had the grit to get herself where she wanted to be.

I think the three heroic characteristics that stand out to me about her are her determination, courage and that she is someone a person can look up to. Her determination carried her through the hard times, and when she was at the low points, she could rely on it and pull herself free from the mire of self-doubt and sadness. Her courage helped her to go ahead and try to get in, or try out. She wasn’t afraid to try. And to be the kind of person that someone can look up to is an incredible thing. It means that you are exceptional, as close to a perfect human being as you can get.

Marian Anderson has helped me to try for things, to strive, to want to accomplish a goal. She has helped me to realize that determination can get you far, even with all of the prejudice in the world. To see what she accomplished is an eye opener, and something that you can apply to yourself, maybe not exactly what she went through, but to know that it is ok to fail, and that even though there may be failures, in the middle of all of it, there will be a success. I am so glad for the example she set for others. Thank you Marian.