News story prompts memory of 'Blind' Boone

To the editor:

When I was an undergraduate at the University of Missouri, I believed I could make a fortune learning to tune pianos. I found a mentor, one Wayne B. Allen, who told me stories about John William "Blind" Boone, who had died about 25 years before. Allen had been his manager.

A recent new story about the renovation of Blind Boone Park in Warrensburg, Mo., and my own memory of Allen's stories agree in all details. Boone was the son of a slave. After a bout with brain fever, his eyes were removed to lessen the pressure on his brain. A neurologist friend tells me this operation was sometimes done.

Today we talk of the idiot savant and less often the child prodigy, which Boone was.

Allen told me of Blind Boone's playing of "The Marshfield Tornado." A tornado had ravaged the town, demolishing a church. Boone had been told of this, and he played his composition at a Sunday-night concert. Allen told me Boone never played any composition the same way twice. At that time, many believed the best music was that which most closely followed the sounds of nature. When Boone reached that portion when the storm strikes the church, everyone in the audience ran outside.

With the advent of electric records, our tastes in music changed. The composer today may wish to show not the sounds of the storm, but his own feelings as his house blows away.

PETER HILTY

Cape Girardeau