Ellie Hodge isn’t slowing down in her tenth 10 years.
Hodge recently experienced her initial guide published. She’s also arranging and major a new local community singing group, creating a track about the Fourth of July and painting.
The Rancho Bernardo resident celebrated her 92nd birthday on July 21. A few months in advance of that her children’s book “The Tree and The Lady” became readily available for invest in on Amazon.
“The Tree and The Lady” is a children’s book by Rancho Bernardo resident Ellie Hodge. The protect is a portrait of her mother, painted by a neighbor decades ago in Ohio.
(Elizabeth Marie Himchak)
The shorter e-book is written in the fashion of a poem. Instructed from the perspective of the tree, it recounts encounters with the girl who planted and prunes it and the birds who created their nest and raised their infants amongst its branches.
Hodge stated it was a single of various quick stories she has written. She chose it for publication simply because of its rhythm, which she explained is a whole lot like the tracks she writes.
The include illustration is of a girl in her property, hanging up her laundry amid trees. The portray is a single a neighbor in Oxford, Ohio, created of her mother, Ga Curridan, a long time back. The e-book, which is $10, is illustrated with black and white mother nature pics by Southern California photographer Maureen Chenard.
“I do not know what produced me want to produce,” Hodge stated about her lifelong hobby.
Close friend and neighbor Toni Kraft said Hodge started speaking about publishing a ebook two many years in the past as a legacy for her sons and grandchildren.
Kraft inspired her to also illustrate the e book, but with so several assignments in the will work, Hodge didn’t have the time.
The Ohio native said the arts have often been a part of her daily life. Her mom was an artist but lacked the time to pursue it as a job. Having said that, she located time to instruct her daughter how to attract, starting off when she was about 4 years previous.
Her dad and mom also inspired audio experiments for their 5 kids — three boys and two women. Hodge reported her father, Charles Curridan, formed a spouse and children band with him on the piano and the young children playing other devices. Hodge however has the youngster-dimensions saxophone she figured out to perform since at the time a entire-dimension saxophone was too big for her to maintain.
Curridan experienced hopes of his daughter becoming a different Shirley Temple. So Ellie and her two more mature brothers also took faucet dance classes from a trainer who came to their household. The siblings have been normally hired to conduct as “The Curridan Cubs” at community activities with their father accompanying them on the piano, she mentioned.
When it arrived time for a career, Hodge naturally turned to songs. She acquired a bachelor’s in songs instruction from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. For the duration of her university several years she studied in England for two months.
Most of her teaching career was in Ohio, while right after transferring to San Diego in the early 1980s she also taught at campuses such as La Jolla Place Working day.
“When I was training songs in schools, they were so crowded the new music trainer experienced to press the piano to classes because there was no new music place,” Hodge recalled about instructing in Ohio. “So I would come across out what the students were finding out and enhance the back of the piano with (corresponding) artwork.”
She also wrote songs to assistance them remember their lessons. A person was about the Mississippi River. Yet another was primarily based on the poem, “The New Colossus,” on the base of the Statue of Liberty. She however recollects the lyrics, the place she had all the students sing collectively and where she broke the song up for the women and boys.
“I theorized that they could master by singing a music,” Hodge said. “The rhythm and melody with the phrases necessarily mean the brain does not forget about it. It was critical to set lessons to songs.”
Mainly because of her improvements in educating, Hodge received quite a few recognitions during her vocation, together with a presidential award, reported her son, Grady Henderson. Hodge was invited to be a part of a Johns Hopkins University project that was a precursor to the gifted education plan in the United States. It also led to an invitation to teach music for two several years in Columbia, South America in the early 1980s.
“The persons there were being so appreciative and pretty outgoing and pleasant,” Hodge explained of her decades training all quality ranges in Columbia.
She commenced a band there, and the mom and dad were so pleased that they rented a symphony corridor for the band to complete a concert, she recalled.
Hodge explained she has lived in several areas in excess of her existence.
She moved to San Diego in 1984 to be near to family customers, like her two sons, Grady and Rolan Henderson, their wives and little ones. In the mid-1990s she moved to her residence in Rancho Bernardo. Her late husband, Alan Hodges, served in an underwater demolition workforce, the predecessor to the Navy SEALs, in the course of Globe War II.
When her primary career was in audio, Hodge, who minored in artwork for the duration of university, has also been commissioned to paint murals all over San Diego. 1 was at Kraft’s previous Café Merlot restaurant in Bernardo Vineyard. It was an outside scene of the cafe. Hodge even now has the unique on canvas at her household.
Rancho Bernardo resident Ellie Hodge, 92, and her oldest son, Grady Henderson, with some of her paintings. They include a single of a Indigenous American warrior, view of Balboa Park and of the previous Café Merlot cafe in Bernardo Winery.
(Elizabeth Marie Himchak)
Amongst her other murals was one particular with many army planes at a barber shop in San Diego.
“I like to paint faces mainly because I really feel a face provides a information,” Hodge claimed.
One of her favorites is of a Native American warrior. An additional is of an more mature gentleman with a youthful girl, which she claimed shows him passing down knowledge to a more youthful era.
Hodge also enjoys painting scenic views because of their architecture. Some of her favorites are of Balboa Park and the California missions, painted from memory or pics she took. Her chosen mediums are acrylic and oil paints.
1 of her most recent endeavors is The Notables, a team she fashioned that will sing at street corners in the group, primarily during the holiday seasons, and at sites this kind of as retirement households. The team has 6 singers, even though Hodge would like far more as prolonged as they can commit to rehearsals. Those people fascinated in signing up for can phone Kraft for particulars at 858-243-1046.
“I want to provide new music to individuals,” Hodge claimed.
Knowing a lot of holidays have tunes written about them, but the Fourth of July is not 1 of them, Hodge made a decision to create one. The Notables are learning the song and Kraft, one particular of the singers, mentioned they will history it and some of Hodge’s other tracks for YouTube. The music involve a person about package deal delivery that Kraft mentioned would make a superior jingle for a corporation like FedEx or UPS.
