VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — As we continue to celebrate Black History Month, News 3 is recognizing one of Virginia Beach's trailblazers in music education passed away a few weeks ago.
Dr. Ruby Allen was the school division's first Black chorus teacher.
"You know music was her heart and she gave it to us," Bobby Lewis, a former student, said.
While it's been some time since Lewis walked the halls of Green Run High School he said he will never forget the day he met Ms. Allen in the school cafeteria.
"'Hey I heard you can sing, we need boys in the choir,'" Lewis recalled Allen saying. "I said 'I'm in shop, I take shop.' She said no I already talked to your teacher, you're making your owl, finish that owl and come to choir."
Lewis said without her help he would not have the life he has now, traveling and teaching music to his own students.
"Ms.Allen never treated us as far as we were different," Lewis said. "She taught us that we have the possibility to make this world a different place no matter who you are."
Those who knew Allen said that teaching is from what she learned by working through segregation.
"My grandmother was the first African American Choral teacher in the Virginia Beach Public School District," Dana Duckworth, Allen's granddaughter said.
Duckworth said before working at Green Run High Scoool her grandmother was the chorus teacher at what would be Virginia Beach's first Black high school.
"She actually graduated from Princess Anne County Training School which would later become Union Kempsville High School," Duckworth said. "She graduated in 1948 and then went back to that school in 1952."
Winning multiple state chorus competitions throughout her career, Ms. Allen eventually retired at Green Run.
She eventually went back to school herself to get her doctorate in music education at the age of 81.
Allen wrote her dissertation on her experience as a teacher during segregation.
"The things in here are hard to read about, you know the disrespect, and there were incidents of spitting, and cursing, racial slurs that she had to endure," Duckworth said.
Some of those experiences explain what it was like for Allen just to find a place to eat lunch.
"I ate as I traveled because there were no dining places that would allow African Americans to eat while traveling on the back country roads," Duckworth read from Allen's dissertation.
Allen passed away in January at the age of 91.
Beyond her influence on music education in Hampton Roads, she also leaves behind what every teacher strives for: changing the lives of those around you.
"Just seeing her wider impact it makes me want to do more and be better," Duckwoth said.
"Everything I do is from those seeds she planted, and I try to plant seeds in people's lives," Lewis said. "She taught us how important that is."
