About 15 years ago now, my late husband Stuart bought me a violin. I said I wanted to play Bluegrass and Fiddle Music. At the time, I had only played wind instruments. This was quite different! A friend dragged me along with her one night to Marta's TCO class at Meredith. And I have never stopped playing my fiddle since that night. I've met wonderful people through her. They are still my very good friends. A favorite memory of mine is when one day she took my violin and played it to show me how to do something. She made a disgusted type of face, and later on that very day, she said...we're going to John Montomery's to get you a real violin. And I came home with something that actually resonated! She was such a wonderful human being. She loved her students, of all ages. And we loved her.

I was one of her first students when she started teaching at Swift Creek Elementary School, the beginning of her teaching career! She was a wonderful person, an amazing instructor, and an incredible musician. She will always be remembered and greatly missed. 

I met Marta in her role as the director of the Triangle String Orchestra in 2013. She is one of those people that was able to bend the course of lives, and she did so to mine.  I had decided I would learn violin as a 28 year old NCSU graduate student and the best way on a budget to do it would be to join the beginner class held at Meredith. Unfortunately that class had been cancelled due to low enrollment but Marta graciously invited me to sit in with the orchestra (I had first touched a violin less than 3 months prior). She also very graciously hosted me through a handful of private lessons and asked me to perform with her youth students in their spring recital, as a "guest performer."  She had this way of turning the seemingly-impossible into the seemingly-easy. I graduated in June, moved away, and lost contact with Marta and the other member of the Triangle String Orchestra, but I never forgot the belief, trust, and support placed in a very green, over-enthusiastic beginner. I am still playing violin and once again find myself in a community orchestra. I truly cherish the semester that I studied with Marta and will never forget her.