Martha Rierson died Sunday July 1, 2018 at her home in East Bend, NC after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. Funeral services will be held at 10am Saturday, July 7, 2018 at Shiloh Lutheran Church in Lewisville, NC.
Mrs. Rierson was born in Greensboro in 1935 and attended Grimsley High School and UNCG, where she received Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Music. She was a concert cellist and studied with Elizabeth Cowling at UNCG and Luigi Silva at Yale. Upon graduation from college in 1958 she auditioned and won the Assistant Principal cellist position with the Atlanta Symphony; however, she was told that she would never sit Principal because she was a woman. Pushing past that dynamic, she declined the opportunity and devoted her life to teaching. Mrs. Rierson’s students have gone on to long and distinguished careers with many of the major symphonies in the world.
In teaching, she found both the love for music as well as the love of her life. She met her husband when they were both teachers at Grimsley high school…she was the orchestra director and he was the band director. They married in 1968 in a whirlwind, 2-week process from proposal to wedding that included music provided by one of Mrs. Rierson’s students. That music was from the unaccompanied Bach cello suites and Mrs. Rierson often called the event “a concert with a wedding at intermission.” Mrs. Rierson was married 32 years before her husband’s untimely passing in 2000.
Mrs. Rierson was a teacher, wife, mother, and constant caregiver. She loved baking and her students always found themselves with cupcakes on Bach’s, Beethoven’s and Mozart’s birthdays. She took care of her parents, her husband and her friends into old age. For the last 18 years she was devoted to her church and to living retirement life on the family farm in Yadkin county, where she and her husband had built their dream home. She loved her family and especially enjoyed being with her grandchildren and always helping in any way that she could.
Mrs. Rierson is survived by her two sons and their families: Charles and wife Victoria of Atlanta, GA and their children Charlie and Lauren; Bryan and wife Jo of Garner, NC and their young son Harris. Mrs. Rierson is also survived by her six siblings: Shirley Swaim of Tempe, AZ; Susan Walker of Burlington, NC; Katherine Schlagg of Marietta, GA; Percy Leonard of Austin, TX; Vera Schneider of Bethesda, MD; and Joe Leonard of Jamestown, NC; as well as numerous nieces and nephews and their families.
Visitation will be from 6 to 8pm on Friday July 6, 2018 at Frank Vogler and Sons funeral home in Clemmons, NC.
The family asks that any memorials be made to the American Parkinson Disease Association or to Shiloh Lutheran Church in Lewisville, NC.
