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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>From:</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> Utterback, Connie [mailto:Connie.Utterback@clark.wa.gov] <br><b>Sent:</b> Tuesday, April 14, 2015 8:04 AM<br><b>To:</b> k7uij@panix.com<br><b>Subject:</b> Don Mitchell<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:7.5pt;line-height:15.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Don Mitchell keeps pinballing around, student to student, project to project, with a near-permanent grin on his face and only the occasional, gentle collision with an equipment cabinet or piano bench.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:7.5pt;line-height:15.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>"I just bounce around and never stop," he said. "It's how I keep my girlish figure."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:7.5pt;line-height:15.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Mitchell wants never to stop, he added, but he's facing the inevitable these days — and so is the small specialty school that's been his way of life for decades. His retirement isn't imminent, but at 66 he thought it wise to let the School of Piano Technology for the Blind know that he doesn't have many more years in him.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:7.5pt;line-height:15.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>"My wife keeps saying I've been working hard for 40 years," he said. "Actually, it's been 43, but who's counting?"<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:7.5pt;line-height:15.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Preparing for the future only makes sense, agreed Cheri Martin, the school's new executive director. Martin has worked for several local nonprofits and recently went hunting for a new challenge after eight years as executive director of the Parks Foundation. Now she's looking to conduct a national search for Mitchell's replacement and then guide the two of them through what she figures will be a two-year training and transition phase. (The Parks Foundation is searching for a new executive.)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:7.5pt;line-height:15.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Having two teachers on staff simultaneously will cost the ever-underfunded facility some extra bucks, she acknowledged. So she's happy to announce that the school just won a grant of $78,963 toward that succession plan — about two-thirds of the total cost, she figures — from the Gibney Family Foundation of Vermont.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:7.5pt;line-height:15.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Ultimately, though, Martin envisions growing the school so there are two or three permanent teachers working with a dozen students at once. For many years now it's been just Mitchell and a half-dozen students.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:7.5pt;line-height:15.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>"Six for Don is just too many," she said. Furthermore, she added, any school with a single instructor is just one disaster away from a school with none.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:7.5pt;line-height:15.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>The position won't be easy to fill, Martin and Mitchell both said. Technicians and tuners are one thing; teachers are another, Mitchell said, and it's pretty rare to find all those skills in the same person. "If this was easy, I wouldn't have a job," said Mitchell, who started out as a student here (and just never found his way back out, he quipped).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:7.5pt;line-height:15.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Martin also whispered that — despite a board of directors stacked with old-school piano lovers — the School of Piano Technology simply has to stay true to its name by catching up with the piano technology of today. That means electronics, she said.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:7.5pt;line-height:15.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>"I think we need to be teaching that too," she said. "I've been trying to figure out how. We need to stay relevant. We need to make sure our students are going to be successful — otherwise, why are we even here?"<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:7.5pt;line-height:15.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>According to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, the employment rate for visually impaired adults is far lower than for nondisabled adults (38 percent versus 76 percent, approximately) and the poverty rate is far higher (31 percent of the visually impaired live in poverty versus 12 percent, approximately).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:7.5pt;line-height:15.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>According to the school's website, 69 percent of graduates have gone on to employment in piano service in places like universities and instrument shops, where fleets of instruments take regular poundings. Many others start their own private piano-tuning businesses. According to the school, there are 17 million pianos in America today — and just a few thousand certified technicians for them.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:15.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:7.5pt;margin-left:0in;background:white'><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Unique<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:7.5pt;line-height:15.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Visibility is Martin's other main challenge. The School for Piano Technology for the Blind is the only one like it on the planet, she said, but even people in Vancouver don't know what it is. When it was founded in 1949 by Emil Fries, the place's name really was The Piano Hospital — and there's still a placard saying so on the side of the building — but Martin pointed out that piano repairs are a small part of what happens here today.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:7.5pt;line-height:15.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Emil Fries was a blind piano tuner and teacher at the nearby Washington State School for the Blind; when his employer phased out its piano-tuning program, Fries reportedly sold his possessions and mortgaged his property in order to start his own piano-tuning school. Nowadays, the school he founded offers a two-year course of study, the first half covering residential and commercial piano tuning and maintenance, and the second covering grand pianos, real-world experience and business operations. Meanwhile, reconditioned pianos are for sale in the front showroom.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:7.5pt;line-height:15.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Each school day begins with class time, then each student goes to work on individual projects. When The Columbian visited, one student was restringing an entire upright piano as a final exam while another was tuning up a baby grand that Mitchell had carefully de-tuned. Others were refurbishing piano-key hammers and other equipment, and one was painstakingly working to level an entire keyboard. Mitchell spent his time zigzagging back and forth among them all, checking the work by hand.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:7.5pt;line-height:15.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Martin said she's keen to spread the word about the place — especially to powerful potential allies like Salvador Brotons, the globetrotting maestro of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Martin used to play piccolo in the symphony, and she believes Brotons would be a superb informal ambassador for the school — if they can only get him to spend a few hours visiting and learning what goes on there.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:15.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:7.5pt;margin-left:0in;background:white'><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Front page of the Columbian. Would you please forward to our list?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:15.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:7.5pt;margin-left:0in;background:white'><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:15.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:7.5pt;margin-left:0in;background:white'><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Stuck on a feeling'<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:7.5pt;line-height:15.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Most of the students who attend the School of Piano Technology come from pretty far afield — all over the United States and all around the globe. Iceland, Belize, India, Korea and Trinidad are just a few of the nations people have left behind to spend two years in Vancouver.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:7.5pt;line-height:15.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Chelsea Carter, 25, is from Nashville — "where every other person is writing songs," she said. She's enjoying developing the saleable skills she needs to make money that she can reinvest in her own music studio, she said.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:7.5pt;line-height:15.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>But first she's had to defeat "a lot of self-doubt. Every one of us seems to suffer from that." At the piano hospital, she said, she's found hope. "You develop some quite impressive skills. It fees like I'm making progress. I'm going to be someone who can stand up and be counted."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:7.5pt;line-height:15.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Jim Jackson, 39, lives in Portland with his wife and 19-month-old toddler. Like Carter, he said struggling with a lack of self-confidence is all too typical for visually impaired people in a seeing world.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:7.5pt;line-height:15.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>But, also like Carter, he's finding that the skills he's building in Vancouver are building his belief in himself, too. He spent too long rebelling against the very idea of "going into one of those 'blindness fields,' " he said — but denying his reality wasn't working out so well, he said with a laugh. Now, he's envisioning starting his own piano-tuning company in Portland, he said.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:7.5pt;line-height:15.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>"I am tired of telling my story that keeps me the underdog," he said. "I want to be the hero of my own story. I want my son to have a dad that he will be proud of."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:7.5pt;line-height:15.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Then Mitchell arrived to feel his way along Jackson's keyboard-levelling project. "Stuck on a feeeeling," he crooned as he checked, "your levelling is gooood ..."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:7.5pt;line-height:15.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#333333'>"This is the most social and connected group of people," said Martin. "The camaraderie is really what I fell in love with." It wasn't the job she thought she wanted, she said, but she emerged from her first visit certain it was a great fit. "I'm so inspired by the way they learn and the fun they have," she said.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Connie Utterback<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Legal Secretary<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>General Felonies-Drug Units<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Clark County Prosecutor’s Office<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Phone: 360-397-2261 x 5961<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Email: Connie.Utterback@clark.wa.gov<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><pre>This e-mail and related attachments and any response may be subject to public disclosure under state law.<o:p></o:p></pre></div></body></html>