(This article, reprinted with permission, featuring Susan Sloan Saxbe, class of 1966, and her brothers, Steve, class of 1966, and Bob, class of 1975, appeared in The Columbus Dispatch on January 22, 2009)  1/29/09

No need to hush
Family's much-loved piano fills Bexley library with music from Mozart, other masters
 
Thursday, January 22, 2009 3:30 AM
By Elizabeth Gibson

Doral Chenoweth III | DISPATCH Susan Saxbe and her brothers donated their family's Wurlitzer baby grand piano to the Bexley Public Library in 1995, and the library has hosted live music ever since. "The piano has been very much a part of my life, and such a good part," she said.

COURTESY OF THE SAXBE FAMILY Billie and Paul Sloan, Susan Saxbe's parents, raised their daughter in a house full of music.

Mozart birthday bashes Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born Jan. 27, 1756. These events are planned in his honor: • The Bexley Public Library will have cake, punch and live music at 2 p.m. Sunday. • Pianist Ian Parker will take the stage at the Ohio Theatre with the Columbus Symphony to play Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 25 on Jan. 31 and Feb. 1. • Mozart Bakery and European Piano Cafe, 2885 N. High St., will pass out birthday cake and free pastry samples with live piano music on Jan. 31.

ON THE WEB Click here to watch a video of Susan Saxbe playing the Wurlitzer baby grand piano at the Bexley library.

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Susan Saxbe always wanted to play the Wurlitzer baby grand piano in the middle of the Bexley Public Library.

She is not one of the hundreds of children tempted to poke the keys while their parents check out books.

This piano belongs to the 60-year-old, her two brothers and the memory of their late father, Paul Sloan. He played it late into the night every evening after his wife died.

After years of half-teasing her husband, a library trustee, that he needed to sneak her in to play after hours sometime, the shy Saxbe laid her fingers on the keys yesterday for the first time in 15 years.

The sound of Bach and Mozart gently flowed through the library, filling the aisles between the most distant stacks of books.

"The piano has been very much a part of my life, and such a good part," she said. "Every time I come here and they play it, I feel my father's presence and I know he's smiling down, knowing that we've loaned it here, where it gets so much use."

The Bexley Library at 2411 Main St. breaks every librarian's golden rule -- that hissed "Shhh." It has two pianos: one in a small basement concert hall and Sloan's, right in the middle of the lobby on the trellis-patterned green carpet.

The piano is tuned four to six times a year because its position near the door throws off the pitch with temperature fluctuations, Library Director Robert Stafford said.

A little portrait of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart hangs behind the piano, setting the scene for the library's fifth annual Mozart birthday celebration this Sunday.

The library has had live music in the lobby since the Sloan piano arrived in 1995, but many patrons still don't know the story behind the Wurlitzer.

Paul and Billie Sloan worked in furniture and interior decorating, but the Bexley couple always had a touch of Hollywood glamour that made heads turn, Saxbe said.

"My father thought he was Frank Sinatra," she said. "He didn't show off, but he was just cool."

When a young Saxbe walked downstairs in the evening, she said, she'd find her parents dancing to Sinatra in the living room.

Then there were the pianos. Paul Sloan could play by ear, and he played often.

When Billie Sloan died in 1978, he moved into an apartment with his youngest son, Bob, now 51, and bought a used Wurlitzer.

After Paul Sloan played his last note in 1981, Saxbe and her husband, Charles "Rocky" Saxbe, took in the piano. Her children grew up playing it. But when the couple moved, they didn't have room for the Wurlitzer.

Rocky Saxbe heard Stafford say he'd always wanted a piano in the lobby.

After talking with her brothers -- Bob and her twin, Steve -- they decided in 1995 to loan the piano to the library.

"At the time I thought it would be a few years," Saxbe said. "But it's theirs as long as they use it."

There's a certain magic to a library piano, said pianist Merry Pruitt, 54, who plays at the Mozart concerts.

"Mozart's music is something that goes straight to the soul," Pruitt said. "You get confidence, humor, warmth in it.

"You often see little kids marching or twirling to the music, and the adults smile or hum along. People just relax."

Stafford said music has always been a focus at the library.

He and the staff searched catalogues page by page, checking off the works of great composers until they felt the collection was comprehensive. About half of the library's thousands of CDs, stacked in rows 30-deep, are classical compositions, he said.

"I don't know of any other such library. It's a contribution to the arts," said Nina Polonsky, a pianist, music teacher and patron of the library's extensive classical collection. "I can find things I can't find at other libraries."

Polonsky said she and several of her students have played on the two Bexley pianos or stopped to listen.

"People can walk in freely, and some really understand music and some don't, but they all have a chance to listen."

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