In memory: YOPW tributes former director Carol Taylor

By Josh Eiserike

Published: May 1, 2008

Carol Taylor will be remembered as many things—mother, wife, friend and musician, to name a few. Carol, who served as the executive director of the Youth Orchestras of Prince William for many years and was involved as an advisor for the new performing arts center at George Mason University, died earlier this year. She had a rare form of pancreatic cancer. Carol, of Lake Ridge, was 55.

The YOPW tributes Taylor in its May concert Sunday.

"She was very sick and we did what we could for her," her husband Bruce Taylor said. "She had a very rare form of cancer that they didn't know a whole lot about."

He added that there's "no script" for coping today, but that the family is focusing less on the fact she's gone and more on the ways she enriched their lives—and every-one else's in the YOPW.

"She seemed to know the right thing to say to calm people down and encourage them to keep going and pursue their dreams," Bruce Taylor, 57, a mathematical statistician and violinist, said of Carol's leadership within the YOPW.

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Carol Tumbleson was born in Boulder, Colo. She grew up in Fort Collins, Colo., and was trained as a violinist at Colorado State and Casper College in Wyoming.

She came to Washington, D.C., in an atypical fashion. She was working as the concertmaster for the Casper Symphony Orchestra. She shared a music stand with a violinist named Susan Cheney. While over at her house, Carol saw a picture of then President Gerald Ford with a man she didn't recognize. Susan Cheney explained that her brother Dick, the man in the photo-graph, was Ford's chief of staff.

"[Carol] was kind of surprised," Bruce Taylor said. "She had no idea [Susan] had those kind of connections."

When Ford lost his reelection bid, the Cheneys moved back to their home state, Wyoming. Carol babysat and gave violin lessons to Dick Cheney's daughters, Liz and Mary. When he was elected to Congress in 1978, Carol followed him to work in his office as a receptionist. She was 26 and quickly moved up in the office. Cheney was the only representative from Wyoming so they were accountable to the entire state. 

"The way that the office worked is everybody pitched in and did a little bit of every-thing," Bruce Taylor said.

Carol put her violin on the shelf for a couple of years, then began playing again with the Arlington Symphony.

She met her husband, a fellow violinist in the Arlington Symphony violin section in 1982. They married two years later. She quit the Arlington Symphony in 1986 and landed an artistic admini-stration staff job with the National Symphony Orchestra.

"She was really excited," Bruce Taylor said. "She met Leonard Bernstein on the first day on the job. She enjoyed that."

A year later she was back with the Arlington Symphony as its general manager. Her husband was the personnel manager at the time, so she wound up being his boss.

In the early '90s the Taylors moved to Prince William County. They were involved with the Prince William Symphony Orchestra and enjoyed the family-oriented nature of the county. Their daughter, Sarah, was born in 1988 and son, Eric, in 1990. Today Sarah is a sophomore at The College of William and Mary; Eric is a junior at Gar-Field Senior High School.

Through the Prince William Symphony Orchestra, Carol got involved in YOPW. She served on the board and became executive director in 1998. Her responsibilities included handling logistics with rehearsals and concerts, writing grant proposals, hiring artistic staff and doing outreach to com-munity organizations.

"Anything other than conducting, she was doing," Bruce Taylor said. "What she wanted was to create a nurturing environment where kids could have fun playing; but also where kids would be held to high standards and improve."

He also said that what made her happiest was when the kids would return to the area to teach, either in the schools or private teachers.

Her proudest moment came in 2006 when she took about 80 YOPW student musicians to perform at Carnegie Hall in New York City.

"They were the only group to come away with a gold medal from that," Bruce Taylor said. "It was really exciting to hear what the kids sounded like in a good hall. It's totally different than a high school auditorium."

But after that trip she was increasingly fatigued, which she attributed to menopause. She woke up in the middle of the night, in January 2007, with excruciating stomach pains.

"We knew then that something was seriously wrong," Bruce Taylor said.

After a variety of tests, she was diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer.

"She was shocked," Bruce Taylor said. "There was some hope that we could have stopped it… she basically just ran out of time. She was in pain most of the year."

She had chemotherapy in April and spent a week at the Anderson Cancer Center in Houston in November. Carol Taylor died on Jan. 16.

"It was obviously not easy," Bruce Taylor said. "It's not easy to see your best friend of 25 years leave that way, but you have to accept the hand you're dealt."

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All seven YOPW ensembles perform Sunday, starting with the youngest and ending with the most experienced group. A reception in the middle features chamber music.

To commemorate Taylor, the YOPW collect money for the Carol Tumbleson Taylor Scholarship Fund. This scholarship, set up by the YOPW, raises money to provide for private instruction for students who could not otherwise afford it.

Purple—for pancreatic cancer—lapel pins and bracelets will be on sale at the concert.

Money raised benefits fund research for the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network.

Also, during the concert, between each ensemble, speakers, including her husband, community members and friends, will share memories about Carol.

The concert closes with a photo tribute set to "Time To Say Goodbye," arrangement and orchestration by Andrea Cappellari. The concert ends with music from "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest."

"Carol loves the Pirates music," YOPW financial director Beverly Hess, a close friend of Carol's, said.

Hess knew Carol first as a friend. They met through their kids' Old Bridge Breakers swim team. Both of Hess's kids were involved in YOPW and Carol asked her to volunteer. Even-tually she wound up on staff.

"She was my very best friend, besides my husband, truly my closest friend," Hess said.

Hess added that her daughter Alexandria described Carol best, a "genuinely nice" person.

"(Carol) wanted to connect with people," Hess said. "She was excellent at being an executive director of a youth orchestra for the same things that made her a good person. She had a true honest interest in the kids themselves and their success in life, not just the orches-tra."

Hess also said that she misses having a friend to talk to. She would talk "about anything and everything" with Carol.

Staff writer Josh Eiserike can be reached at 703-878-8072 or .

WANT TO GO?

What's up: Youth Orchestras of Prince William perform a memorial concert for Carol Taylor

When: Sunday at 3 p.m.

Where: Gar-Field Senior High School, 14000 Smoketown Road, Woodbridge

Tickets: $8, $6 students and seniors

Contact: pwcweb.com/yopw, 703-590-7083 or

The scholarship: For information about The Carol Tumbleson Taylor Scholarship Fund visit pwcweb.com/yopw. For information about the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network visit pancan.org