The Piano Teacher Who Never Stopped Believing

In 1987, Margaret Ellison taught piano lessons from her living room in Tupelo, Mississippi. One of her students, a twelve-year-old boy named DeShawn, had hands that shook from anxiety every time he sat on the bench. His father had just left. His mother worked double shifts at the poultry plant. DeShawn wanted to quit every single week.

Margaret never let him. But she did something more important than insisting he practice. Every lesson, before a single note was played, she would sit beside him and say, "DeShawn, you belong at this piano. God put music in those hands, and nothing can take it out."

She said it when he fumbled through scales. She said it when he forgot his sheet music. She said it the week his grandmother died and he showed up with red eyes and couldn't play a single chord. She just sat beside him in the silence and said it again.

Thirty years later, DeShawn Ellison-Carter directs a gospel choir in Memphis. He still hears her voice before every performance.