Virginia Barton played the piano, demonstrated the macarena, spun some vinyl records and told the history of classic tunes with a June theme.
But her San Diego Continuing Education students — all in wheelchairs — barely moved and didn’t sing along during her hourlong class last week.
Barton, who teaches in the emeritus program of the San Diego Community College District, wasn’t offended. Heck, she’s deaf in one ear herself — “I can’t hear them either,” she says.
“Ginny” Barton is 96.
The oldest faculty member in the college district — if not the state — has been working at Brighton Place nursing home for 30 years. She also holds weekly music-appreciation classes at several other skilled-nursing centers.
“Heads nodding or toes tapping” is the main response she gets from her elderly students (all her junior), she said. “Once in a while, they’ll swing their body or tap their fingers.”
Barton recalls an Alzheimer’s patient — at another center — who could sing anything she played. “But he didn’t know his wife sitting beside him.”
The native of Columbus, Ohio, (she says Oh-HIGH-uh) began her career shortly after graduating with a bachelor’s in music education from Ohio State University in 1942. She also majored in pipe organ at another school. She taught violin, piano, cello and flute privately.
Barton once dreamed of being a conductor, or a concert pianist, but gave up performance hopes because “I wanted a normal life.”
If you call starting a career at 65 normal. That’s when she began working for the college district — a month after her husband, Raymond (known as Barry) died in June 1984.
She earlier had worked for 12 years as a substitute teacher in the San Diego Unified School District.
“She is an inspiration to so many students who look forward to her smile and enthusiasm for life,” says Carol Wilkinson, dean of the district’s Parent Education and Emeritus Programs. “She has a passion for teaching and serving those who may feel isolated or disconnected.”
Wilkinson says that when Barton is asked her secret for healthy aging, she always responds, “It’s a positive attitude and dark chocolate!”
“Virginia recently told me that when some of her classes were canceled, she continued teaching them as a volunteer because she cares that much about her students.”
Longtime friend Jean MacDonald, who works in district administrative services, says Barton is a Girl Scout at heart.
“Virginia has been a Girl Scout for 87 years,” MacDonald says. “She volunteers at events helping participants get where they need to go. She also goes to the main office to help with mailings and anything they ask her to do. She loves the work she does for the Girl Scouts and does it with a smile and a cheerful spirit.”
Barton doesn’t need much help. She drives herself to nursing homes where she performs in cafeterias or activities rooms, toting a few of her LPs from a 1,000-record collection.
Her car is a 1994 Mazda — “an antique like me,” she says.
She had four children — two boys and two girls — and lives with the younger daughter. One son died on Labor Day 2013. She also has 13 grandchildren or stepgrandchildren and nine great-grandkids or step-great-grandchildren.
Despite being 4 foot 10, she cuts a commanding figure. Using a decades-old Sony portable record player, last week she told Brighton Place residents how the macarena was originally a song about a prostitute. Hey, it’s an adult class.
But among her most vivid career memories is of a sad child.
“When I first began teaching back in 1942, I had a little boy from Tennessee” — whose mother was a prostitute and drug dealer and father a prison inmate. A brother left the boy with knife cuts “all over his body,” Barton said.
In art class, the child drew everything black — black clouds, black trees, black flowers.
But at the end of the semester, after she had taught him to play the French horn, “everything turned colorful” in his artwork.
“I always wonder what happened to him,” she said. “But the music had such an effect on him that his whole outlook on life changed. I hope he’s some famous individual now.”
MacDonald, the office aide at the district’s Mid-Center Center in City Heights, has known Barton for about nine years.
“She brings a smile to me on a weekly basis,” she said. “We’ve become very close and tease about me being her adopted working daughter. I’ve had the privilege of sharing good times and sad times with her. … I love seeing the bond grow between an older adult and a younger adult in the workplace.”
But all amazing things must end. Barton is retiring in August.
“I was supposed to retire [in June],” she confided. “But I decided to do a couple more — I just got a raise.”
Why retire now?
“I think it’s time,” she said softly. “My ears, my eyes.”
Besides going deaf in her left ear recently, she’s also had three surgeries on her right eye. She had a slight stroke two or three years ago — affecting her mouth and right hand.
“But I still play” the piano, she says, wearing keyboard earrings and a shirt that says “88 keys — 10 fingers. No problem.”
Her plans for retirement?
She’ll return to some of her usual convalescent hospitals as a volunteer teacher.
Says Barton: “The good Lord gave me a talent, and I’m trying to give back.”
