Music educator Grace Chapman Nash (11/19/1909-11/9/2010) grew up with her brother and 3 sisters on a farm in Garrettsville, OH. Upon completing a Master of Music degree at the Chicago Musical College in 1936, she married Ralph Nash, an American engineer working in Manila, PI. There she pursued her musical career as violinist, teacher and mother of two until the outbreak of World War II. Under the Japanese invasion of the Philippines in 1942, her family was captured and interned for 38 months, during which a third child was born. Following the war she resumed her career as violinist and music teacher in Wilmette IL while raising her three sons and writing a book about the family's wartime experiences (That We Might Live). In her 50's she studied the Carl Orff approach to music education. Over the next 30 years, with her husband's help, she provided instruction to an estimated 4000 music teachers all across the country. As a founding member of the American Orff-Schulwerk Association, she taught college level workshops in some 40 states and several foreign countries, and published over 25 books of instructional materials. Grace Nash taught her last workshops at Florida State University in her 80s after moving to Westminster Oaks in Tallahassee, FL, in 1991.
She is survived by her sister Florence Pearson and her three sons, Ralph, Gale and Roy.
In commemoration, her sons have established a website at www.gracenash.com. A tea will be held in her honor at the Westminster Oaks Health Center at 3:00 on Friday, 11/19 (her 101st birthday).
Arrangements are under the direction of Culley's MeadowWood Funeral Home, Tallahassee, FL.
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