Small Miracles
West Windsor residents Everett Schlawin, Manisha Battacharya, Akshay Ratchod, and Kelly Rhatigan, teach music to other students as volunteers with the Small Miracles Foundation. Schlawin and Battacharya, who both teach piano, are seniors at High School South. Ratchod, a student at Lawrenceville School, teaches drums. Rhatigan, also a student at Lawrenceville, teaches piano.
The organization is a nonprofit group that provides free and subsidized musical instruction to children who could not otherwise afford it. They also loan instruments when available.
Robert Murray Diefendorf, the founder and president, began the group in Princeton nine years ago. Born in Chicago, he began playing piano when he was only six years old, when a doctor thought that piano lessons would help a small motor problem that Diefendorf had. He did overcome the problem and went on to graduate from Boston University’s School of Music.
When he arrived in Princeton for a position as piano teacher at Westminster Conservatory, where he still works, he spent many hours at the Arts Council of Princeton. When he was teaching English to Mexican residents from the Princeton area, he noticed that kids with them would bang on the piano. He began offering free lessons to the young children.
The turning point for him came when he met a young Chinese girl who was friends with a Mexican girl. She asked him for lessons but then told him that her parents were both doctors. “The free lessons were only for kids who couldn’t afford them,” he says. “When I met her mother she told me that she and her husband worked in restaurants and were not doctors in this country.” Diefendorf began giving lessons to his new student, and she went on to do well in competitions and entered the gifted program at Westminster. “These things grow, and the idea began to take shape as something serious,” he says.
Soon after that, a Princeton High School student expressed interest in becoming a volunteer teacher. After applications and interviews, a scholarship program began. There are now close to 30 volunteer teachers. The students come mainly from Princeton and Lawrenceville. “Anybody can learn how to play classical music,” is Diefendor’s advice for future students. To volunteers he gives this advice: “Give all the love you possess as it fills in the gaps and supports the student.”
The foundation seeks support in the way of volunteers, musical instruments, and money. For information on how to help call 609-439-1915.
