"Whenever I Play the Piano, it Will Always Be For Her:" Students, Colleagues of E'Juana Andrews Remember Her Gifts of Music
Andrews taught band at several Spotsylvania middle schools, as well as private lessons in Fredericksburg for decades. She died last week.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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When Ashley Slemp acquired a turn-of-the-20th-century piano from her family’s farm house, she wanted it to ensure that it didn’t just sit around gathering dust.
And she knew exactly who to call to help her make music again—E’Juana Andrews.
“For a year and a half I visited E’Juana weekly and learned so much more than music,” Slemp wrote in a Facebook post about Andrews, a longtime, beloved area musician and music educator who died last week.
“She has a rich history in music in this area from middle school band to jazz gigs, to Sunday morning worship in addition to the thousands of lessons she taught,” Slemp wrote. “Her legacy will continue for many generations. I am beyond humbled to be a small part of that legacy.”
Andrews taught band at Thornburg and Battlefield middle schools in Spotsylvania for decades, as well as private flute and piano lessons at Roberson’s Music and Melodious Music Studios, where she not only taught students but mentored teachers as well.
“Ms. Andrews was a wealth of information, knowledge, and experience,” said James Wilson, who ran Roberson’s lesson studio and was the store’s education representative while Andrews taught there. “She helped other teachers manage their lessons, and she was the go-to person for new teachers.”
Celeste Paz took piano lessons from Andrews from the time she was 6 years old. Now 18, she credits Andrews with making her “fall in love with music.”
“She inspired me to keep trying, even when nothing felt right, and my hands just wouldn't work with the keys,” Paz wrote about her teacher. “She made beautiful music, and even more beautiful memories with everyone who knew her. It was physically impossible to resist smiling when talking to her, her joy was so strong it filled the room just like her jazz piano music skills did.”
“I love Mrs. Andrews so much, and whenever I play the piano, it will always be for her, and the hopes to make others smile like she made me,” Paz wrote.
Wilson said that’s how all Andrew’s students, both the ones who took private lessons and the ones she directed in middle school band, felt about her.
“Many students would be coming in afraid of the instrument and afraid to play, and in just a little while, she’d get them excited about playing their first solos,” he told the Advance. “When [Roberson’s] had recitals, most of her students would sign up to perform because they were so excited about the music.”
Toby Fairchild, a longtime friend and professional drummer who played music with Andrews, said she used her sparkling sense of humor to make her students comfortable.
“Whatever nerves they had coming into learning a musical instrument, she got them to let that guard down with her humor,” he told the Advance. “They realized that making mistakes is just part of learning. She made students laugh, and they got over it.”
That sense of humor is what enabled Andrews to connect with hundreds of middle school band students.
“I would go in and do percussion clinics for her [band classes] once a year, and her humor always got their attention,” Fairchild said. “They always loved her because she kept them engaged. She didn’t talk down to them. She included them. And they always appreciated her for that.”
“When you went to Ms. Andrews as a student or a parent or, in my case, as a musical colleague, you were like family to her,” he continued. “She made you feel like family regardless of who you were.”
Andrews was personally responsible for inspiring hundreds of students to join band, Wilson said.
“She had a great relationship with all the teachers in Spotsylvania, so they would come to her and say, ‘Hey, I have 5th graders going up to 6th, can you come and do a presentation on band instruments?’ And Ms. Andrews would visit the classroom and show them, ‘Here’s a flute, here’s a clarinet.’ She would play them and get them all excited.”
Andrews trained as a flautist and later got a master’s degree in piano performance, Fairchild said. She was a working musician as well as an educator all her life.
“We would end up on gigs together all the time throughout the years, everything from church gigs to wedding gigs to rock gigs to jazz gigs, you name it,” Fairchild said. “I have been in musical situations with her on and off for decades and she’s always a joy to be around. She always brought humor to every situation.”
To Wilson, what made Andrews special is that she was not only loved music and was a world-class musician, but she loved sharing it.
“That’s the most important part,” he said.
To Don Scott, who learned from and performed with Andrews, she was small in stature but “a true giant to many in this region.”
“She taught on a grand scale, inspiring our children to be great and not stopping there, many adults were tutored on the fine points of piano and flute,” he wrote in a Facebook post about Andrews. “No one I have ever heard played Praise and Worship music as skillful and anointed as E’juana. Her playing alone could usher in the very presence of God … This world is gonna miss this little giant, but I can imagine her playing a concert grand piano and pulling out that flute for a little something extra, smiling and giggling in heaven, because that’s her way.”
Andrews’s colleagues at Melodious Music Studios wrote that she was “a tier beyond all music teachers as well as all humans [we] know, and she will always remain an inspiration for the kind of person we would all be lucky enough to be like.”
“She was a fantastic music teacher, phenomenal. And an amazing flutist and pianist. And yet constantly humble. Constantly trying to better herself despite the fact she was already so wonderful. We can't even begin to fill her shoes.”
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