THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, December 21, 1995 TAG: 9512210350
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B8 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines
D. Jerlene Harding could talk balky students into picking up violins instead of tubas and guitars, and playing strings long after they left her class.
She could persuade reluctant friends and strangers to finance trips around the country and to Europe for young musicians.
She could show her young charges that there were many worlds beyond their neighborhoods in Portsmouth, Norfolk and Chesapeake, that the Statue of Liberty and San Francisco streetcars were more than just pictures in books.
Harding, 62, died Wednesday after a short illness. A Portsmouth native and retired 34-year music teacher in the city's public schools, she leaves behind the Tidewater Area Musicians - TAM - Youth Orchestra she founded 20 years ago and continued to direct.
The group long has featured a range of musicians from high school freshman to college students playing just about everything: classical, jazz, gospel, pop, soul.
For two decades the group has performed locally and around the country, launching the professional careers of several alumni in symphonies and in popular music.
More important to Harding, TAM was her way of keeping promising young musicians interested in music, she said earlier this year.
``I was being transferred from one school to another, and when I left, the kids would get out of the orchestra - and they were so talented,'' Harding said. ``So I started them in community orchestra.''
She so influenced Davon J. Yonkers that he plans to be a music teacher and band and orchestra leader himself.
Harding first taught Yonkers in sixth grade. He's now a Norfolk State University freshman who this fall still played string bass with TAM.
``She was the type of person who got us motivated into playing a lot,'' a subdued Yonkers said Wednesday after learning of her death. ``She wasn't the type of person I could say no to.''
Neither could others.
``She always made her trips - there was something about what she had done and how well she had done with that orchestra that prompted'' people to donate, said Audrey Orton, wife of the late Vernon A. Orton.
Vernon Orton was Harding's principal in the late 1950s. He encouraged her to start an orchestra at Portsmouth's old S.H. Clarke Junior High School.
Harding grew up in a family that loved music and respected education - two of her sisters also taught. She retired from the school system in 1991, but continued to work with TAM and other community youth projects.
``She was a neat woman,'' said Maury W. Cooke Sr., a Portsmouth community activist and former First Citizen who worked with Harding in starting a steel-drum band program for youths.
``She was real quiet about the things that she did. But the things that stick out the most about what she did was, she understood how important the arts were to the kids.
``She made kids just have a love for it, for the arts. And pushed them, to excel, so they would be the best they could be in it. She was a special woman,'' Cooke said.
Harding's funeral is 11 a.m. Saturday at St. James Episcopal Church. The family will receive visitors in the church Friday from 6 to 7 p.m. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
D. Jerlene Harding died Wednesday after a short illness. She founded
the TAM Youth Orchestra.
KEYWORDS: DEATH OBITUARY by CNB