Melba Morrison

News Obituary Article

ATLANTA: Melba Morrison, instinctive pianist, open-minded kindergarten teacher

By HOLLY CRENSHAW

Melba Morrison had the kind of musical smarts that can't be taught in school.

"She was the type that if she heard a song, she could sit down and play it --- and play it better than the version she'd heard," said her daughter Christy Pegram of Apex, N.C.

"Danny Boy," "Sentimental Journey," "Tennessee Waltz" --- those were favorite standards she could play in her sleep, but they were merely a prelude.

"She played show tunes. She played the classics. She played hymns. She played the Beatles. She really played everything," her daughter said.

She even played piano while her niece, "Designing Women" and "Desperate Housewives" TV star Dixie Carter, learned to sing as a child.

"She had so much fun with her music that it never felt like she was giving a production or a recital," her daughter said. "At home, it just brought life to the party, and she wasn't self-conscious about it. She was always very modest about her accomplishments but, with the piano, she knew she could play --- just like you know the Earth is round."

Melba Carter Morrison, 89, of Atlanta died of heart failure Friday at Delmar Gardens. The funeral is at 2:30 p.m today at Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church. A.S. Turner & Sons is in charge of arrangements.

After she moved to Atlanta in the 1930s, the McLemoresville, Tenn., native studied briefly at the Atlanta Conservatory of Music but not enough to throw off her naturally instinctive approach.

For 21 years, she taught in the kindergarten at Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church, now the Glenn School for Young Children. On St. Patrick's Day, while the children hunched in the corner, she'd get them to stretch out their airplane-wing arms while she played taking-off music on the piano. They'd zoom across the classroom and then, when they set down in imaginary Ireland, she'd serenade their landing with an Irish jig.

"People nowadays spend thousands of dollars to get a degree in early childhood education and learn the kind of things that Mama just did naturally back in the '50s, '60s and '70s," her daughter said. "She loved children for who they were, and she didn't try to fix them or fit them into a mold."

She was the same with friends.

"They were all different from each other," her daughter said. "But she said she learned from everyone she knew and taught me to always be open to what other people can teach you."

Mrs. Morrison read voraciously, from historical biographies to every word that Celestine Sibley wrote, and she prized her first edition of "Gone With the Wind."

She cooked red velvet cake, fried chicken and other Southern fare, refinished furniture, sewed elaborate drapes and prom dresses, and relished the challenge of taking on new projects, her daughter said.

"Once, when Mama was in her 60s, she called my sister and said, 'Well, I've wallpapered the kitchen and bathroom, so now I know I can do anything.' "

Survivors include another daughter, Kay Dickinson of Duluth; a son, Winfield Scott Morrison III; a brother, Halbert Carter of McLemoresville; eight grandchildren and one great-grandson.

© 2007 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution