ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, March 13, 1997 TAG: 9703140072
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: N-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SARAH HAMMERSCHLAG SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES|
In her free time, the young musician plays for patients at hospitals and nursing homes and for pupils at elementary schools. The results are amazing.
Betty Ashton Andrews, a 16-year-old high school senior at the North Cross School, says her harp can heal. Over the past sixth months she's gathered plenty of supporting evidence.
Andrews, a Roanoke native, spends much of her free time shuttling herself and her enormous gilded pedal harp between hospitals, nursing homes and elementary schools.
Through her program, Harp to Heart, Andrews has single-handedly brought a new form of music therapy to the Roanoke Valley.
On Thursday afternoons, you can find her at the Burrell Nursing Center. There, she plays old show tunes and spirituals in the lounge. Slowly, she said, ``the wheelchairs begin to roll from their rooms.''
Each week, the same group of little old ladies greets her. One of the center's residents invited her back for his birthday party.
On Friday mornings, after racing out of fifth-period study hall, she arrives at the Carilion Cancer Center, driving her family's 15-passenger van. It normally carries her five younger brothers, but on Friday mornings it transports her harp.
On the second floor of the cancer center, she sets up her instrument and music stand in the oncology and hematology unit so that outpatients receiving chemotherapy can be soothed and distracted by her music.
``Everyone at the cancer center wants to hear `Amazing Grace,''' Andrews said. Nurses, doctors and patients alike refer to her as ``the little harp girl,'' and all week they anticipate her return.
Trish Tarpley, the unit's clinical coordinator, described the music's effect on a new patient.
``This morning I had a patient who'd never been in before. Immediately she put on a pair of earphones. Her hand was all tense and I kept saying `relax, relax.' Then the harpist started to play and the woman took off her earphones. Then her hand started to relax. Soon we had something to chat about.''
After school on Fridays, Betty Ashton Andrews loads her harp back into the van, and this time drives to Carilion Roanoke Community Hospital, where she plays for the premature babies in the neonatal ward.
Over the past six months, Andrews has been documenting the music's effect on the infants. She's discovered that it slows down their heart rate and steadies their breathing. More obvious, though, is how quiet the ward becomes once Andrews begins plucking her strings. All the crying stops, and one by one the infants drift off to sleep.
Amy and Kenneth Myers, new parents from Dublin who heard Andrews play at the Ronald McDonald house, said the music put their infant son, Bradley, right out. ``If only we could take the harpist home with us, we'd be in great shape,'' Kenneth Myers said.
Andrews first conceived the idea for her harp therapy program last summer in Tacoma, Wash., where she attended the World Harp Congress with her teacher, Song Hee Uhm. At the conference she met Dr. Ronald Price, who had founded a program called ``Healing Harps'' in Chicago.
Price, a physician with cerebral palsy, had discovered that practicing the harp helped ease his symptoms. He took this knowledge and applied it as a form of therapy where patients both play and listen to harp music to treat their various ailments.
Andrews, who has played the harp for seven years now, began practicing her version of harp therapy as a part of her senior project at North Cross.
In addition to playing at the hospitals and nursing homes, Andrews has been giving free lessons to Kayla Patterson, an 8-year-old student at Greenvale Elementary school, and to Sally Norman, a 99-year-old friend of the family. Andrews contends that learning to play the harp improves her students' concentration and confidence.
``What people really respond to,'' Andrews said, ``is the attention and love. Of course the music is soothing and special. It puts people in a state of awe.''
Andrews' commitment has not been without sacrifice. She's had to give up playing for both the varsity tennis and volleyball teams. Even still, she said, ``I don't know how I get it all done.''
What spurs Andrews on? ``I get to make people happy doing what I love,'' she said.
Next year Andrews will attend Vanderbilt University, where she will study at the Blair music school and major in harp. ``It's great,'' she said, ``there's a hospital right there, so I can continue to do my therapy.''
Andrews hopes to make a career out of such work. She intends, in fact, to become a harp therapist. It may sound like a new career field, but as Andrews said, it's older than you'd think. ``After all, David played the harp for King Saul and it eased his pain.''
LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: STEPHANIE KLEIN-DAVIS/THE ROANOKE TIMES. Betty Ashtonby CNBAndrews, a senior at North Cross School, plays the harp while Amy
and Kenneth Myers feed their baby, Bradley Myers, 13 days old. The
Myerses were trying to keep Bradley awake for his feeding in the
neo-natal intensive care unit at Carilion Roanoke Community
Hospital, but the harp music serenaded him to sleep.