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The First Leontyne. At Laurel's Oak Park High School, Leontyne seemed to specialize in everything. She was a high school cheerleader ("There would be Leontyne at half time," says Kate Price, "walking around the field on her hands") and a soloist on virtually every one of the Negro community's civic and church programs. She also appeared at funerals, until one group of mourners was so overcome by her expressive performance that she was asked to stop singing. She did but vowed angrily: "That's the last funeral I'll ever do."
At 17, "high on the hog, with my first piece of luggage and two coats," Leontyne left Laurel for the North. Impressed by her voice, an Army chaplain from nearby Camp Shelby had helped her win a scholarship to Wilberforce University, a mostly Negro school in Ohio. On her entrance application she wrote, under Plans for the Future: "I'm worried about the future because I want so much to be a success."
Because she wanted to help her Brother George through college, she signed up for a teacher's training course (he later went through South Carolina State on a full athletic scholarship). But she kept on singing-in the glee club, the choir, the dormitory shower. Even as a freshman she had what a friend remembers as "a star quality." Once she was stopped by hazing upperclassmen and ordered to sing: "Well, she just sang-the song was Because-and when she stopped, everyone just stood there. Her voice took them so much by surprise they stopped hazing her and didn't bother any of the others."
Leontyne finally abandoned her teaching plans in her senior year and set her sights on Juilliard and the Met.* At a concert at Antioch College Paul Robeson heard her, decided that she was marvelous, and agreed to sing at a benefit to help her musical education: the concert raised $1,000. At that point Elizabeth Chisholm went to James Price and asked permission to help Leontyne too. Says Leontyne: "I love her more for that-for asking-than for any check she ever gave me." Leontyne Price fiercely insists on distributing credit for her success-not just to "the wonderful Caucasian family" but to "the Omnipotent" for providing talent and "to my parents for having birthed me."
Crisis at Juilliard. Leontyne's greatest stroke of luck at Juilliard was being turned over for vocal coaching to Florence Page Kimball, herself a former concert singer. The Leontyne who came to her was a "gawky, very simple child-just another student to me." Miss Kimball realized that Leontyne was more than another student after hearing her sing Mistress Ford in a Juilliard production of Falstaff. Officially. Miss Kimball was her voice teacher; unofficially, she counseled her on how to dress and carry herself, how to handle the social perplexities of a Northern city. Says a Juilliard friend: "Lee used to go to Miss Kimball the way other people would take to a psychiatrist or a priest." Miss Kimball still coaches Leontyne. makes critical notes at her rehearsals, will travel almost anywhere-as will the Chisholms-to hear her perform.