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After 80 years, Hyde's piano returns to Webster

By Rose Hooper
Frankie Hyde Herald photo by Rose Hooper

As she picks out the melody to "Sweet Bye and Bye," Frankie Hyde (seated) recalls the first song she ever played on this 80-year-old Wesser Brothers piano she donated last week to the Family Resource Center. The center's new music director, Evelyn Gordon (top right) told Frankie and her daughter-in-law, Linda Hyde, "Not only will this piano enhance our chorus, but we are starting all kinds of musical groups for tots, teens and adults."

"In the Sweet Bye and Bye..." Frankie Buchanan Hyde hummed as she ran loving hands over the worn keys of her 80-year-old Wesser Brothers piano.

It was as if the piano could play the tune of her life as it pumped out the first song she ever learned on it. Back in 1935 Frankie purchased the piano with her teacher's salary she earned at the Gay School. Folks who've been in Jackson County a while will remember that the Gay community and post office seemed to quietly merge, along with the school, into the Savannah district.

Frankie bought her piano in Canton and had it delivered to the Arthur Allman home in Webster where she was staying.

"My mother died when I was 11, and I went to live with the Allmans," said Hyde. "From their house I walked over the field to Mildred Cowan's house - she's dead now - to take music lessons."
When she got married, Frankie's husband lived across the county line, so she loaded up that piano and headed back over the mountain to Canton with it.

Now, 63 years later, Frankie's piano has returned to Webster. It's new home is the Family Resource Center, the former Webster School.

Linda McElroy, the center's director, was attending a regional meeting of family resource centers when she announced their new Family and Arts Program.

"I told everybody how great the music portion was going since we hired Evelyn Gordon and all that we needed now was a piano," McElroy said.

Another Linda (last name Hyde) stepped forward and said, "I know of a piano that might be available."

When Linda Hyde's son Jeremy was 8, his grandmother Frankie gave him the old Wesser Brothers so he could take lessons. The same piano that brought musical joy to Frankie keyed Jeremy's love of music, prompting him to major in voice and sacred music. But Jeremy no longer lives at home, and the old spinet sat spinsterly silent in the Hyde's grand room, with no ivories tickled and no peddles pumped.

Frankie, Linda and Jeremy all agreed the neglected piano needed a new home where somebody would play it, a home where loving fingers would coax it back to life.

The Family Resource Center in Webster seemed like the perfect choice. There, so many eager fingers, under the tutelage of music director Gordon, drummed with anticipation.

"Not only will this piano enhance our chorus, but we are starting all kinds of musical groups for tots, teens and adults," said this graduate of Stetson University's music school and a former top-ranked mezzo-soprano soloist in New Orleans, Mobile and Florida.

"I never had an opportunity for such musical instruction or involvement when I was growing up," said Frankie, who loves music, "everything from opera to country western. I was on my own before I could buy my own piano. I think how lucky the children especially are who can take part in these music programs; it makes me proud that my old piano is going to be a part of all of this."

"There's another story behind this story of the Canton-to-Webster, Webster-to-Canton, Canton-to-Webster piano," said director McElroy. "Linda Hyde's husband, Mike, plays in the same band - Totally Different - as my husband's brother, Joe McElroy. Doesn't that just go to show you what a small world it is?"

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