LKM Brief Autobiography

I, Lawrence Keeney Marsh, entered the world on June 19, 1946. I was born the second child of Dr. Paul Bruce Marsh and Mrs. Ruth Carolyn Keeney Marsh. I was given my middle name after the family name of my maternal grandfather. The first child, my sister, is Susan Jean Marsh (Ellsworth), born March 2, 1943. I was born at James A. Garfield Hospital on Florida Avenue in Washington, D.C.. This facility has long since been merged into the Washington Hospital Center on Michigan Avenue.

My father was a plant scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and my mother was a public schools music teacher. My father was born in Niagara Falls New York on November 21, 1914, and my mother was born in Mallard, Iowa on November 29, 1913. For one year after my birth, we lived in Washington D.C. at 3115 Newton Street N.E. just across the District line from Mt. Ranier, Maryland. Then, our family moved to 9509 50th Avenue in College Park, MD, where we lived until 1957.

I remember my childhood neighborhood well. I knew most of our neighbors, and often played with them. I also remember all of my elementary school teachers, and most--but not all--of my junior- and senior-high school teachers. (See my BLOG article on LKM school days recollections.)

I grew up in a musical family: My father played the clarinet, my mother and sister played the violin, and I played the violoncello, even as I still do until today. I arrived at cello as my instrument of choice by process of elimination: I did attempt to play brass-wind instruments, but gave them up because I was always getting pimples and boils on my mouth which disabled me to play. At age five, I had started to play the piano, but also gave that up because my little hands at the time simply could not make th reaches on the key-board which most music demanded of me. The cello became my instrument of choice because it is physically the most comfortable to play, and has a very pleasing tone quality if played in the hands of expert artists. Still, I wish to this day I had begun to play piano when my hands grew bigger, and had taken lessons on it to play it, side-by-side with cello. On Saturday evenings, we would often gather together as a family to play chamber music together, rather than to watch television. My musical activities, as I recall, made me extremely "culturally incorrect" (as a parallel to "politically incorrect") in the opinion of my contemporary peers, and I remember a sense of chagrin and embarrassment to let them know of my cultural predilections. Nevertheless, I so valued my musical life that I personally did not regret it then and do not regret it now. As a family, we did much over a period of several years, to bring into existence an all Prince George's County High School orchestra, this being largely thanks to my mother's position as a music teacher in the county schools. This genre of music, I felt, and still feel today, is definitely superior in quality to the latest "pop-culture" music. This latter is transient, here today and gone tomorrow; but the names of great Classical music composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, and many others who lived between 1700 and 1900 live in immortality. So despite my extreme unpopularity among my peers, I had and still have the cultural better half! Today, I wear my badges of "political incorrectness" and "cultural incorrectness" with honor and pride. Politically incorrect and proud of it!

I remember well my four excellent cello teachers: William Stokking Jr., John Martin, Leopold Teraspulsky, and Mihaly Virizlay. I recall liking Mr. Teraspulsky the best because he did not smoke, and thus never smoked during my lessons with him. All four were excellent cellists and teachers per se; however, I did find the smoking habit of the other three most disconcerting, as I was raised as a non-smoker, and now the medical community knows it possible to contract smokers' diseases from second-hand exposure to smokers' smoke. I believe at least two of my four former teachers are now dead because of diseases linked to long-term smoking.

Bill Stokking was my teacher from age eight until I entered junior high school. At the time, he played in the Navy band orchestra, later moving on to become principle cellist in the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras. Sometimes, he would frighten me by telling me at my lessons that unless I played my lessons exactly as he demanded, he was going to "wrap that music stand around my neck". But Dutch-uncle Bill was still a lot of fun, as he often told tall tales in the which he always made himself out to be the hero! Despite his fast temper, he still had a great sense of humor to go with it. Then came my second teacher, John Martin, principle cellist of the National Symphony. He was much more of a gentleman, more easy-going, and I appreciated that! He was my teacher from the start of my junior high school days, until I graduated from high school. To this day, I always remember his immortal comment on my performance at my lessons: "That was nice for a warm-up; now, let's play it!" By that, he meant to say my playing lacked artistic expression, despite it being technically flawless. My third teacher, Leopold Teraspulsky, was at Indiana University Music School. I studied with him only two of the four years I was at Indiana University, and this was a distinctly disappointing experience. I had wanted to study with him for all four of my years at Indiana University, but I withdrew from the Music School after my sophomore year and returned to major in my foreign language studies in the College of Arts and Sciences simply because the Music School was greatly over-crowded and thus it was well-nigh impossible to get time to rehearse in the school practice rooms. All the cello faculty was great, and I felt guilty that I could not give them the practice-time in preparation of my lessons that they truly deserved. I temporarily took a hiatus-break from my cello, but returned to it in 1974, when I studied with my fourth teacher--Mihaly Virizlay--at the George Peabody Music Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. This I did until 1980, when tuition for lessons became simply too expensive for my budget. I remember Mr. Virizlay as being an excellent teacher, when he taught! But the point here is that he often ran out on me, skipping out on lessons obligations to me in favor of concertizing in order to glorify and deify his own personal repute. He was one of the most conceited persons I have ever met: if he heard a clap of thunder, he would walk over to the window and take a bow! In all, I had 18 years of formally-structured cello education, and still continue to learn today by listening to CDs of the great cellists of the past to play, as well as to the performances of contemporary cellist colleagues.

Later in 1957, our family moved to Beltsville, and lived at 4203 Wicomico Avenue. I went to Buck Lodge Jr. High School in Adelphi, Maryland in grades 7 and 8, while Beltsville Junior High School, just at the end of our street, was under construction. I transferred to it at the beginning of the 9th grade.

I recall generally hating my years in junior and senior high school, they were sad and demoralizing because the Education Establishment had mandated me to take certain courses, ostensibly "for my own good", on compulsory basis. I also felt socially rejected because for all my gargantuan efforts, I was no good at sports, whereas our society at large glorifies and even deifies its athletes. I strongly felt at the time, especially as a member of the male sex, that being a smash success in sports is the only possible avenue to popularity and social acceptance. Given my failure in that endeavor, and culturally-incorrect involvement in musical endeavors, I sadly wrote off a priori all social life in my teenage years, feeling sure no woman in her right mind would care to be seen in my company. This factor was extremely damaging to my social development, and accounts for the fact that I postponed marriage until age 46, and that to a woman of foreign origin who herself gives no popular assent to the sports world. I do not harbor any ill will against my former class-mates, concerning my "culturally-incorrect" relation to them as a musician: they had no mean-spirited hate of me per se; rather, in their cultural ignorance of my musical endeavors, they just did not "get it". Indeed, the genre of music I play on my cello was never composed for consumption of the masses of common people. Rather, it was meant for the consumption of Europe's upper-crust socio-political elite at the time.

Academically, I always did reasonably well in both high school and college, always on the honor roll--but not at the very top of my class. In addition, while in high school, I was very busy with extra-curricular activities: I ran cross-country and track-and-field. I also took private lessons on my cello and in the Russian language, in addition to playing in the all Prince George's County High School orchestra. In my senior year, in addition to college entrance exams on my high school subjects, I also took the Russian language exam. Out of all my exams, I made the best score on my Russian exam, something which made school teachers and officials angry at me instead of pleased, to see me take academic initiative of my own.

My college years were much happier than my public school years, insofar as I was studying what I wanted to study, rather than what I was forced to study against my will. I will always say that the truly successful teacher is the one who inspires his/her students to continue study of his/her subject long after they leave his/her class-room. That describes my private teachers but a small number of my public school teachers. I went to college at Indiana University from 1964-1968, graduating from there with a B.A. degree in Middle Eastern studies. I also took cello lessons from the university's music school while there. I continued on for an M.A. degree at University of California Los Angeles, from January 1969 until June 1971. For the most part, my college years were much happier than were my junior- and senior high school years because my chosen academic endeavors in college were highly respectable in those institutions: not so in junior and senior high school. I temporarily discontinued my cello studies while at U.C.L.A., but later resumed them after graduation as I continued them at the George Peabody Music School of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, 1974-1980. I can truthfully say that my cello has been and still is an invaluable and irreplacable joy of my life. I would not trade the experience for any other riches of this world and this life. My cello is a rare find: made in Cremona, Italy in the year 1684, it is now worth about half the value of my house.

In 1968, our family moved within Beltsville from 4203 Wicomico Avcnue to 11105 Emack Road. When not in college, between academic sessions, I lived with my parents until starting government employment with the U.S. Defense Mapping Agency on June 21, 1976.

In my government career, I served as a geographic names specialist serving two government entities simultaneously: the Defense Mapping Agency and the U.S. Board of Geographic Names. Our work was primarily in service to the military, but secondarily was in service throughout the entire civilian government as well: our job is to standardize geographic names and thus end confusion as to their correct spellings, as encountered on various diverse maps and in other geographic publications. I felt greatly honored to serve my country, but found the supervisory managers to be quite demoralizing insofar as they managed the work-force negatively by heavy-handed fear and coercion, rather than positively through inspirational leadership and encouragement. They had not a clue about smooth inter-personal relationships; they were fine managers of information, but were anything but excellent leaders of people. As I review my overall career experience with the government, I would not say it was altogether a failure, there were some good times to be had. The pay and side benefits were also excellent, I had no complaint about those, until after taxes! Overall, I give the thirty-year experience a grade of "C". Perhaps the most demoralizing aspect of the experience was that my individual initiative to make suggestions for improvement in the agency were usually rejected by arrogant self-worshipping managers and agency officials who thought they know everything, and we the peon rank-and-file employees know nothing. Even if ideas were "wrong" in substance, the truly demoralizing rudity was that I was not even thanked for my initiatives and concerns. I was often sternly reprimanded by bosses for having the temerity to think for myself. Little did they understand that citicism of the present status quo is a golden opportunity for improvement in disguise, and we must think not only of ourselves at the present, but of future succeeding generations of workers coming after us.

I married Lidia Bertha Aguilar-Marin from Bolivia in Darnestown at the Poplar Grove Baptist Church on December 19, 1992. We moved into our present home shortly afterwards. Our first and only child, daughter Eva Keeney Marsh, was born to us October 11, 1993, at the Rockville Seventh Day Adventist Hospital. My mother passed into eternity in May of 1993, one day just before Mother's Day. My father did likewise on November 5, 1995, just three weeks shy of his 81st. birthday. It was sad to lose my parents, but it was well for me to start a new chapter of my life. We now live in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

Today, I look back on my childhood and teen-age years with some degree of fondness, but admit if I had them to do over now, there are a few things I would not have done. Most notably, I would not have tried to succeed in the sports world. Why waste my time on an endeavor in which I have no talent? Also, I would not have taken certain academic courses, had I had the prerogative in my hand--most notably, math and science courses. To be sure, my teachers of those subjects were extraordinarily nice people, per se! Still, God does not endow all of us with equal physical and mental gifts, or even with equal levels of intellectual acumen. I doubt, too, that my math and science teachers could even have begun to play a musical instrument at the level which I play the cello, nor could they begin to tackle the mastery of a foreign language completely strange to English. In one word, Dr. Know-It-All is simply not out there! Still, it must be the goal of the education establishment to change the attitude of American youth towards education: we want students coming to school because they eagerly want to learn, rather than because they have to learn: school must not be a substitute for prison.

Were I to have time and resources to do so, I could write a book on my life a thousand pages long, recording some very humorous events and others not so humorous. But it stands well worth to say that some school subjects, while a dreadful bore in class at the time, may take on an unexpectedly strong relevance later in adult life. Such is the case of my experience with U.S. History. Today, now that America is re-evaluating itself with much intensity, the topic of America's past history is very interestingly controversial as it never was before. Especially captivating in American life is fascination with the American Civil War experience, it was a defining turning-point in America's history which demands further re-evaluation today.

Finally, I cannot close out this commentary on my past, without appropriate commentary on my view of the future. I am very confident that Americans will always make great advances in science and technologies, but fear a concommitant decline in morality because of unwise applications of new inventions and discoveries. Yes, Satan the devil also loves to go to school! For the future, my largest concern lies also rooted in the past: Will we ever have equal justice under law for all, as the words in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building boast? We have rarely, if ever, had it before. (See my BLOG article, "The U.S. Supreme Court Not So Very Supreme"). To date, some people have enjoyed great liberty at the cost of heavy sacrifice from many others. Tomorrow, when freedom finally rings throughout the land, will both poet and peasant hear it equally? Will they be allowed to do so?

-LKM