Hers is a life sustained by music

PULLMAN — Wherever Julia Cohen has roamed in her 100 years, the music followed.

Inland Northwest classical music fans may know her as a founding member of the Washington-Idaho Symphony, where she played viola until she was in her 90s. But even though she was instrumental in that symphony’s genesis, Cohen did the same thing when she lived in Atlanta, Ga., taught music to kids all around the Pullman area and entertained countless crowds in other venues with various groups.

Her daughter Becky Thorgaard of Clarkston summed up that passion during a recent visit to Cohen’s room at a Pullman retirement community.

“If a community is lacking in something like music, mom just felt that community was lacking an important part of life,” Thorgaard said.

Cohen was born Julia Spalding Silberberg on Oct. 23, 1918, in Woodstock, Conn., and grew up in Worchester, Mass. Musical talent abounded in her family, and the children were all given instruments and taught how to play. Cohen was the oldest and focused on playing the viola and piano. Her three sisters played violins and the cello, and brother George played flute.

She got her professional start early when the Silberberg children and two cousins performed for an hour at the nearby town of Charleston and earned $50. After that, they added uncle Jack Masters’ magic show and aunt Ida Masters’ choreography to the act, and were soon in high demand for concerts around the area.

“They would call on us to entertain,” Cohen said of the locals who were starved for quality performances. “We were the only working team.”

Thorgaard recently read through some of the song titles from their repertoire, and Cohen smiled wistfully at each one. “A Little Kiss Each Morning, a Little Kiss Each Night,” “Forever Blowing Bubbles,” and “My Gypsy Sweetheart” were a few.

The family act was able to spread its wings when Cohen’s boyfriend at the time, Jimmy Small, not only loaned her the family car but taught her how to drive it to performances up to 75 miles away. Cohen met Small at the local Congregational Church, where he was in the choir. In a memoir she wrote with Thorgaard, she recalled Small having a very good singing voice. But that wasn’t all.

“Jimmy could also hold hands,” Cohen wrote. “We would hold hands and ice skate.”

After high school, she studied at the Longy School of Music, which had a close relationship with nearby Harvard and Radcliffe colleges. Her musical education took a big turn, however, when she settled on faraway Whittier College in Southern California to further her music studies. Thorgaard said the decision must have been tough since the move would break up the family band.

“Which I thought was a real gutsy thing to do,” she said, smiling at her mother. “Good for you.”

Cohen met her future husband, Arthur Cohen, before she left, but turned down a marriage proposal when he asked that she convert to his Jewish faith to satisfy his parents. But Arthur also moved to Southern California after studying biosciences at Harvard. They reconnected, and Cohen proposed again, this time disregarding his parents’ wishes. She accepted.

The couple followed Arthur’s teaching career to a college in Atlanta, and it wasn’t long before Cohen was playing viola in the newly founded Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. They and their four children moved to Pullman in 1962 when Washington State University lured Arthur there to set up its electron microscopy lab.

By 1963, her civic inclinations led her to help found a musical ensemble that would grow into the Washington-Idaho Symphony. She didn’t confine her talents to that venue, however. For instance, she appeared every year at Lewiston’s Dogwood festival, playing her viola in the ad hoc bands that would conglomerate for the event.

“A group of players would be called on to entertain,” Cohen said.

Former Lewiston Tribune editor Ladd Hamilton sometimes played his violin in the pickup orchestra, so she got to know him and Tribune opinion page editor Bill Hall. She ended up working for the Lewiston Tribune as a music reporter when she complained to Hall about the paper’s lack of music coverage.

“He said ‘Why don’t you do it?’” Cohen recalled with a chuckle. “It was interesting. I realized no one was doing it. It was a vacancy that was open.”

Cohen celebrated her 100th birthday recently with a big gathering of family at a fancy Pullman restaurant. Thorgaard has some ideas about how Cohen outlived a century.

“Mom has a mental strength,” she said. “Years ago, she realized stress was a bad juju. She’s a thoughtful, introspective person. She figured things out.”

Cohen canceled out the stress with music and her love of nature, which she worked to conserve. And one other thing may have played a hand in her longevity, Thorgaard added.

“I have a feeling that the musical instrument she chose had something to do with it,” she said of the viola, which is bigger, heavier and harder to wield than a violin. “That takes a lot of strength.”

Cohen has a simpler answer about how she has logged 100 trips around the sun.

“Oatmeal,” she said without hesitation. Why? “Why not?”

Mills may be contacted at jmills@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2266.