The viola, Geneva, and Marlon Brando

HARRISON – Born in New York, Beatrice Asken, 82, moved here to be near her daughter. Now she works at Fare Share Market.

She recently took time to tell us about her life.

Q: When were you born and where were you brought up?

A: I was born in 1929 and I was brought up in a variety of places. In New York City, White Plains, NY and in Brooklyn, NY. Those were the main places.

Q: Did you have many siblings?

A: I had an older brother and a younger sister. I was the psychologically ill-placed middle child! I was especially close to my sister. Not as close to my brother; he was four years older than I and my sister was three-and-a-half years younger so I was the one who took care of her.

Q: What did your parents do?

A: My father was a painter and for a living he did sign work. My mother was a singer of classical music.

Q: What was it like growing up?

A: Our family had a sort of salon and people would come to our house on the weekends and she would sing and she would have an accompanist, someone who would play the violin, so we always had music in the house. Of course, my father was a painter so we had paintings all over the place.

When I was 4 years old, my mother realized that I was very musical. What she didn't realize was that I was so nearsighted I couldn't see the music. So she got a teacher for me and I started taking piano lessons and I copied everything my teacher showed me but I couldn't read the music.

When I was 4-and-a-half, I realized that my eyesight wasn't good because I ran down a hill toward a lady that was at the bottom pushing a baby carriage. I could see the lady and the baby carriage so I figured it must be my mother because my sister was born just the year before and I came up to a perfect stranger.

Then, when I was 5 years old, I was in kindergarten and they knew that I could read and the teacher wanted to make sure that I didn't lose the skill so she would send me up to the first graders when they had their reading class and that teacher put me at the back of the classroom.

I was there by myself in my isolation; I couldn't see a thing, I didn't know what was happening and she caught onto that. She kept putting me closer to the blackboard, and when I was 3 feet away, I could read what she had written.

Q: Was there anything you wanted to be when you grew up?

A: I wanted to be a ballerina, no doubt, I thought it was the most beautiful thing in the world. I took ballet lessons when I was older. I also took lessons when my three girls, who were the oldest in the family, took ballet lessons. Rather than just sit there I got a leotard and would go through all the exercises with them.

Q: Where did you go to school?

A: I went to the High School of Music and Art as an art student and my sister went as a music student, so we carried both the characteristics of our parents. I graduated from Brooklyn College. I studied art in the design department. I wanted to be an art teacher and one year of teaching was enough to persuade me not to be an art teacher. In New York City, when you have 42 students in the class it's very discouraging.

Q: Did you get into mischief or play pranks?

A: I was a very good child. I was very responsible; I took care of my sister. We traveled on the subway all the time. When I was 13 and my sister was 10, my mother was afraid that I was too shy so she wanted to do something about it and she managed to get me enrolled in the dramatic workshop at 66^th West 12^th Street in New York.

That was the place that Marlon Brando went to and Elaine Stritch. They were a little bit older than I, but every time they needed children, they called on my sister and me and we would be in their productions. It was very interesting but it was something you wouldn't do nowadays, because we would come home after a rehearsal at 11 p.m., two little girls on the subway, you wouldn't do that today.

Q: What have you had for jobs?

A: My first job was as a teacher and I really didn't enjoy it. They extended my license because they needed middle school teachers and I taught junior high subjects in an elementary school and it was very uncomfortable for me. I didn't like it and I didn't like my principal – he didn't help me very much.

Here I was, a novice, and he didn't help me, so I didn't want to stay at that job. Then they were looking for draftsmen at Bell Telephone Laboratories, so I took the test and I passed it, so I worked there for several years as an electrical draftsman. It was very challenging. I enjoyed doing it.

Q: When and how did you meet your spouse?

A: We had friends in common. He had a party and my friend invited me to his house, for the party, and that led to 37 years of marriage.

Q: What did you do when you got married for work?

A: I worked at Bell Telephone Laboratories most of the time and he was a pre-med student and he was accepted at the University of Geneva in Switzerland so we moved and I couldn't work there. It was difficult to get a job because Swiss got the jobs usually, and not the foreigners.

Q: Anyone said you look like someone famous?

A: Someone once thought I looked like Dame Judy Dench but I don't think I do.

Q: Did you do much traveling?

A: We lived in Geneva for five years and during the time that we were there we traveled to Austria and to France and England.

Q: Which place was the most fascinating and why?

A: I was impressed by everything. I would like to return to Geneva again and see what it's like there now. It was nice living in Geneva. I had my first two children while we lived there and I would take them out for walks to the university gardens, called the Bastion. It was a lovely city, very clean. The people that I met there were very nice. Especially a family of Belgian people who had children about my children's age, who became our friends.

Q: Did anyone influence you to the point of changing your direction in life?

A: I suppose my husband in a way, because here I was all set to be a painter and to do things like that and having five children really changed my path. You can't leave your paints out when you have five children, or they'll be in the paint.

Q: Do you collect anything or have a hobby?

A: I don't collect anything but I do have a hobby. I play the viola, the viola da gamba and I play recorders. I play early music, before the 16^th century and I play later music on the viola. When my children were old enough to take care of themselves a bit, a friend of mine interested me in working for a classical music radio station.

While I was in Connecticut I worked for them for 25 years and I've lived here for 11 years and they still play my tapes. The people who are in the office at the radio station still keep in touch with me and they tell me that I've been on the air the longest, for over 30 years.

Q: Organizations?

A: I belong to the Bates Orchestra, now. I used to belong to the Androscoggin Valley Community Orchestra but it had to disband due to lack of money. I do volunteer work for the Naples library. I stamp books and file books and help people look up things.

I'm also a part of Fare Share. I start the day for Fare Share usually – there are two days a week that I don't work. I get the day going so that by the time someone else comes in at 10:30 a.m. or 11 a.m., things are already humming.

Q: What is the last book you read?

A: It was a book by Nora Roberts that was very interesting and before that it was 206 Bones by Kathy Reichs.

Q: What subject do you wish you knew more about?

A: Classical civilizations. It interests me what our ancestors did, how art was used as a part of mythology, as a part of history. I'm very interested also in the Impressionist art movements and impressionist music. Impressionist music is the idea that it describes something – the birds or the trees or the music, like Debussy's Le Mer.

Q: What is the one thing you could not give up?

A: I can't give up music. It's important for my enjoyment of life. I just love hearing music. Music says more to me than what people say.

Q: What is the one thing you would happily do over again?

A: I can't think of anything offhand. I did what I did and I have to stick with it!

Q: Do you have any children?

A: I have five children. My eldest is 55 and my youngest is 45. They're three girls and two boys and they're all productive wonderful people. I would choose them for friends if they weren't my children. I enjoy speaking with them.

They live so far away most of them – when I became older and I was living in Connecticut and I realized that I had no member of my family nearby, I decided that as I grow older I will have more problems, health wise and otherwise, I should really be near at least one child in my family. So I came up here because Andrea lived in Maine.

My other children: Dara lives in France; and Chandra, Fren and Ariel all live in California. Now I have six grandchildren who range in age from a year and a half to 21.

In our family, the children have an understanding of English that is different from what it actually is. For example, when Ariel was a small boy and he would do something that was not quite right I would say, “Ariel, behave!” and he'd say, “I am being have!”

And one time, my grandson was downstairs in our cellar in Connecticut and he saw a bass fiddle in the corner and he said, “Grandma, can you play it?” And so I took the case off and tuned up the pegs and tightened the bow and I started to look down at the instrument and it had a huge accumulation of dust and I said, “Oh dear, I'm going to have to dust this!” and he said, “Don't you mean undust it?” I think it's a family trait!

Q: What was the best memory that this interview brought back?

A: Several memories, giving birth to my children.

Q: What would you like people to know about you?

A: When I was very much younger I heard “give me a house by the road and let me be a friend to man,” and I still feel that way.

Q: Last day on earth; what would you do and who with?

A: I would probably read a book, if I was by myself. Otherwise I would play music with friends. I play early music with friends in Rockport and Cape Elizabeth so that and the orchestra keep me going with music.

Q: If anyone could walk in right now, who would you most want to see?

A: My mom, because when we were little, my sister and I were always fighting my mom. She was the authoritarian figure and we naturally rebelled against authority. But as we grew older, and my sister is now 79, she says “You know, Mom did this and that, and she was right!”