FROM SHIP TO SHORE
This is a story of celebrated Oscar winners and legendary international Broadway and opera directors -- my teachers and mentors. It is also a story of survival – from the bitter dregs of alcoholism and growing up gay in the 1950s.
My story tells about spiritual growth and gay sexual identity, a varied career as a musician, actor, writer, adman, marketer, and California State employee stationed at The Actors Fund of America and Experience Unlimited, a job club for professionals.
It all began with a performance of “HMS Pinafore” at age four in Mrs. Farrell’s pre-school, to which my late Aunt Miltie McCusker would walk me to and from each school day. (Her father named aunt Miltie for his friend, the late Maryland Adjutant General, Milton Reckord.)
I loved being on stage, and later, as an adult, I returned to the Annapolis Community Center to see a production of that G&S confection by new children.
In that same Community Center, then the focus of most Annapolis cultural activities, I performed in a stage version of “Peter Pan” with the Annapolis Children’s Theater at age 12 -- and fell desperately in love with an older teen, Chuck L., 17, who played Peter Pan.
The older boy sang in the choir of the College Avenue Baptist Church. His pastor scolded me on the historic old Annapolis Public Library steps because of a love letter I had written to “Peter Pan.” I felt destroyed -- doomed to Hades.
I had served as president of that church’s Royal Ambassadors youth group (while simultaneously serving as the local YMCA’s youth group president). I had found Jesus (so I thought), was baptized by that pastor in the church wading pool, and now I questioned everything about my religion.
My Aunt Miltie had been a member of St. Anne’s Episcopal Church up the street from the Baptist church, and I used to fetch pamphlets from St. Anne’s to take home to her. My mother, Esther Carlisle McCusker Kearse, and my other beloved Aunt, Margaret Cooper McCusker, were Baptists.
My legendary Uncle, Francis Stanley McCusker, served as organist and choirmaster of St. Anne’s for ten years and as adjunct organist at the Naval Academy Chapel, in which my christening took place. That was the convincer.
Uncle Stanley was a surrogate father and a tremendous musical influence on me. I was impressed that he had given a command performance for European royalty while serving in the US Army in World War I. He introduced me to Carnegie Hall and the old Lewisohn Stadium in Queens.
I played piano at parties for him in New York’s Greenwich Village and later in his plush apartment on Sutton Place after a second, wealthier marriage.
His first wife had died of alcoholism, but his second bride’s family had a portrait hanging in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
My mother, affectionately called “Muffie” or “Muff” by close friends, apparently hoped I had the musical gene in me and sent me off to piano lessons with a female organist at St. Anne’s.
I would go to classes weekly in the Parish House on Duke of Gloucester Street. The classes started well with the traditional Thompson studies but came to an abrupt halt after a few weeks. The fingering numbers provided by Thompson no longer matched the music notes.
“Why can’t you play those notes!“ There was anger from Miss Hinman, my teacher, and many tears from me. I could not read music! Because she never taught me how to read notes and must have assumed I just got it by osmosis!
I begged my mother to let me stop those infernal lessons. “Mama, “I said tearfully, “I just can’t do this! “
Mother, who had been a singer, was wise. She said nothing and did nothing for an entire year. Then one day, she quietly informed me that an old friend, Selma Fox Nelson, had come back to Annapolis and was teaching piano.
So, Mrs. Nelson came to me at the piano in the parlor and reassuringly got me started on the piano again.
“Let’s see where you are,“ she said nicely. The first thing she did, bless her, was teach me how to read music. I began to look forward to those piano lessons in her home on King George Street until she left town again a couple of years later.
She did not leave me empty-handed, however. Instead, she turned me over to a new piano teacher that was just moving to Annapolis, Pearl Tuttle Cooper, from Beverly Hills, CA, where she and her former husband had both been concert pianists.
Further, they had heard Rachmaninoff perform in Beverly Hills during his time there. I was inspired. And a bit fearful.
“Play something for me,” my new teacher said. So, Mrs. Cooper sat me down at the piano in her apartment on Maryland Avenue and critically auditioned me. I played some of the compositions I had learned with Mrs. Nelson.
It was elementary to her. Immediately she announced, “Now go home, buy the Chopin Etudes, and we will begin!” I was thrilled and eagerly bought the book of studies from the only music store in Annapolis on West Street, looked at the music inside, and wondered, Am I capable of playing this?”
Mrs. Cooper put me to work learning Chopin’s “Revolutionary” Etude, and it was fast, furious, and required crossed hands. I wish I could say I mastered it, but the tempo and agility required were obstacles.
We went on to others, including Mozart Etudes, and one day years later, Mrs. Cooper announced, “David, I have taken you as far as I can. When you perform in public, come back to me, and I will coach you.”
I did consult her when playing piano on the radio or in local performances. I loved her. She taught me how to play the piano and admonished me that all art relates to great piano playing — paintings, ballet, theater – all are informative.
