Rosie's violin: Academy founder now a student in her 70s
Rosebell "Rosie" Schurz doesn't remember the first time she picked up a violin as a child, but she remembers when war forced her to leave her instrument behind.
As the founder of Rosie's House music academy in Phoenix, the German-born Schurz has helped to give the gift of music to dozens of young people who couldn't afford lessons on their own. Now 79, after a life of service, she is rediscovering that same gift for herself, having become a violin student again seven decades after Allied bombs interrupted her early education during World War II.
"You're never too old," said Schurz, who will brave the spotlight at a faculty recital at Rosie's House on Monday, April 27, performing a pair of duets with violin teacher Patty Waxman.
"I had to start from scratch, but I feel pretty comfortable," Schurz says. "We've skipped a lot of things, because I don't have all that time like a 6-year-old to go through every little bit that I should know. I just want to be able to play maybe some fiddle things alone, and I want to keep playing duets.
"I like playing with her. Even if I make mistakes, she can save me."
Schurz was born in 1935 to a well-to-do family in Munich. In 1942, the city came under attack from Allied air forces. The windows of the house were blown out and part of the roof was missing, and her family packed up some bare essentials — which did not include young Rosie's violin — and fled to a farmhouse outside the city owned by a friend of her father.
"Even to this day, when I hear sirens, I freak out," she says.
The farm was a refuge from the worst of the war, and not just for her family. In the final days, she recalls the owner giving shelter to a frightened teenage soldier who suddenly appeared.
"They took the uniform off and took his rifle and hid it somewhere and put him in a stable, and I remember him sitting there for days after just staring out the window," she says.
After facing these early hardships, Schurz devoted her life to helping others.
She immigrated to the United States in 1964 and became a Red Cross nurse. She moved to Phoenix a few years later, becoming a professional photographer and doing volunteer work for the homeless.
In 1989, she met Mother Teresa when the now-beatified nun visited Arizona. The encounter inspired Schurz to do even more, and in 1996, she and her third husband, the late Woody Schurz, fixed up an old house and turned it into a community center called the Christmas House, offering after-school programs for low-income children. The center soon evolved into Rosie's House, which now resides at Central United Methodist Church.
"I'm happy I founded Rosie's House. That was probably my life's achievement," Schurz says. "(But now) I'm retired, and my hubby is gone. I lead a whole different life now.
"I'm reinventing Rosie, and trying to do a few things that maybe I should have done many years ago and never got around to doing."
Learning the violin, for example. Schurz started taking lessons with Waxman, who is on the faculty of Rosie's House, two years ago.
"I said, 'Do you want to teach Grandma Moses?' "
Waxman says the two have developed a strong friendship.
"I think people come into our lives for a reason," she says. "The timing of Rosie coming into mine has been really good in terms of issues in my personal life, things she's been able to relate to, and helping me stay grounded with my kids as a single mom.
"I help her with music, and she helps me with life issues. I help her with her performance anxiety, she helps me not strangle (my ex-husband)," Waxman says with a laugh.
Waxman says teaching adults to play music can be challenging because, unlike children, they know how difficult it is to master an instrument and are frustrated when they can't make a beautiful sound.
Schurz says she has to be especially patient with herself because of the physical challenges of age, particularly arthritis.
"Sometimes I'm really excited, and sometimes I get really frustrated," she says. "I want to show her that I practiced everything, but sometimes the fingers freeze. I play with a great deal of pain sometimes. I just ignore it … I just have to tell myself, 'Do the best you can. Don't expect to sound like Joshua Bell.' "
At the same time Schurz has been exploring her love of music, she has journeyed spiritually.
Her family was never religious, but she's exploring her Jewish roots at Temple Kol Ami, a Reform congregation in Scottsdale.
Last year, she visited Israel with members of the congregation, and shortly thereafter completed the process of converting to Judaism.
"I like going to temple," she says. "I like listening to rabbi talking about Torah. I've been inundating myself with all kinds of books that I'm slowly devouring chapter by chapter, going back thousands of years ago and trying to understand everything — which nobody ever can.
"I've been to various churches in my life that I looked into and didn't do anything for me. The closest that I could come to would be to be a Buddhist monk and sit in the temple. I'm very spiritual, but I'm not overly religious, per se. I'm not crazy about (doctrine). I can only say that I feel safe and comfortable. Peaceful. It was like I came home to something that was familiar to me. I can't explain."
Waxman thinks that she can.
"I think you're returning back to yourself," she tells Schurz. "You're finally coming back to Rosie."
Rosie's House Faculty Recital
When: 6:30 p.m. Monday, April 27.
Where: Central United Methodist Church, 1875 N. Central Ave., Phoenix.
Admission: Free.
Details: 602-252-8475, rosieshouse.org.
Reach the reporter at kerry.lengel@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4896.