Terry Brown - Legacy Society Member

(This talk was presented at a Planned Giving Seminar sponsored by the Houston Symphony this autumn. Ms. Brown is a long time member of the Houston Symphony Legacy Society.)

Like many of you, as a child I begged my mother for piano lessons. I began them in the second grade, and even though our neighbor was a violin professor and conductor of the local college orchestra, I wasn't interested. It was the piano or nothing.

At last, our own piano finally arrived. I have a vivid memory of telling Mama that my dream was to give an onstage recital in a long dress, with a candelabrum on the piano, just like Liberace - and play with two hands!

I continued my lessons through high school, and, like my grandmother before me, played the piano and organ for my church and choir throughout my teenage years. My piano teacher did a great job of encouraging her advanced students, and she took several of us to the third Van Cliburn Competition in 1969. ;She was a friend of Van's mother, and we were awestruck when he came over to visit with us and shake our hands!

At LSU I originally declared a double major in piano and French...now there's a skill set to thrill any parent, but that plan didn't last long. My father's family was full of amateur musicians, but my mother's was decidedly not. I'm sure they were relieved when I came to the startling conclusion that I might actually need a job, and so I graduated with an accounting degree instead. After graduation, I got a job with United Gas and moved to Houston the same month that Miss Ima Hogg died, in August 1975. I started coming to Symphony concerts then, when Larry Foster was the music director.

About six years later I joined the Houston Symphony League. Among the earliest volunteer jobs that I recall are working at the Galleria tables during the Radio Marathon, being a League Division volunteer under the old annual fund team structure, and being a music runner for the Ima Hogg Competition, when it was still being held at Hamman Hall. As I got more involved and held various positions on the board, I left behind my life as a CPA and eventually served as League president.

Since the 1990's I've been a member of the Houston Symphony Society Board of Trustees and have served on various committees over the years. I currently serve on the audit, board governance, development and planned giving committees.

Since 2001 my main volunteer focus has been the creation of the Houston Symphony Archives, working to replace Symphony materials destroyed in the flood of Tropical Storm Allison and to provide information useful to Symphony staff in the course of their work. My archival partner in crime, Ginny Garrett, and I spent the next dozen years gathering materials and preparing for the Centennial. We joined forces with writer Carl Cunningham to write a book about the Symphony. In the process of working on the book, it came home to us that the growth of the Symphony was not in any way accidental-but a product of steady work by many people and generations of planned support.

There have been more than 1,700 Symphony Society board members since the founding of the orchestra. If you add in volunteers of the Houston Symphony League since 1937, not to mention our loyal audience members, that adds up to a lot of people invested in the Symphony. Every single bit of their work and support for the Symphony has been important for our growth.

So, the Symphony has really been a big part of my life. I wasn't destined to be a performer, but I have enjoyed my life as a listener. Things change. For a long time the Houston Symphony was a beneficiary of my IRA, but I'm now in the middle of changing how I will leave money to the Symphony, and the vehicle for that is still up in the air.

My means aren't so very large - if the earnings on my planned gift don't quite match my annual fund gift, it'll at least be a good start in that direction. When I'm gone, I'll still be contributing to the Symphony's bottom line.

More importantly, the reason I'm part of the Legacy Society is simple:  I want future generations of Houstonians to know the joy of hearing high-quality live performances.  I hope you will also decide to make the Houston Symphony part of your planned giving.