Mom, music bring family together

The nation celebrated Mother's Day last week and Teacher Appreciation Week and National Music Week the week before that. Altha Robinson, a mother, former teacher and musician has earned the right to observe all three.

Robinson's love of music began at a young age and trickled down to her own children and grandchildren, as well as the students she taught during her tenure in the Cape Girardeau public school system, a career that spanned 25 years. Her daughter, Ramona Bailey, has loved and played music all her life and is now a pianist at St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church in Cape. Bailey's own daughter, Peighton, sings in the church choir and at school, recently performing at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Extravaganza at Cape Girardeau Central Junior High School, where Bailey accompanied her on the piano.

Music runs in their family; all of Bailey's children and her brother's children are musically inclined. They obviously inherited this trait from Robinson, who has played the piano since she was 10 and has shared that knowledge with many others throughout the years.

Robinson gave birth to two, Bailey told the Southeast Missourian of her mother recently, but she has mothered many more. Having been a student in her mother's music class as a child, she said that "they all just really loved her," adding that it "makes [her] feel good that all the lives she really touched, she probably doesn't even know."

Her influence in the lives of her own children and the lives entrusted into her care as a music teacher is making a difference. In a culture where families spend little or no time truly communicating -- where even in restaurants, family members are too often either banging away on their tablets or cellphones, it is refreshing to see a family share their common love of music -- banging out a rhythm on the bongos or chords on the piano while singing together.

A matriarch's passion passed down to her daughter, her grandchildren, and even her extended family of students unites and truly inspires.