Interview Transcript
Meg was 15 when she wrote to Bernstein asking for an autograph. I got in touch with her via her school alumni network, and we agreed to speak in December 2024. We talked about her love of music theatre and how she came to appreciate classical music over time. She also told me about her father’s interest in autograph-collecting, which inspired her to start her own collection. She even gave me a virtual tour to show me some of the autographs displayed throughout her house.
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Dear Mr. Bernstein,
I have a collection of autographs, including an autographed picture of George Gershwin, and would like very much to add yours to my collection.
I find your ‘young People’s Concerts’ and books very interesting, and I think that they are a great help in the understanding of ‘music’.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Meg Sheridan
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My mother was not … she worked in … about the time she married my father, she was working in airline reservations. She had been a French major in college, and she … even she moved around. She went to three colleges in four years.
But my father, his work … he was … he was a photographer and writer. He wrote two books. Actually, one the year I was born, and he was a war correspondent for the Boston Globe, as I mentioned, in World War Two … towards the end of World War Two – ‘44 and ‘45. And he was then moved to Admiral in Chicago. And when he moved to Admiral Corporation, he was there for quite a few years, then suddenly, he said, we’re moving back … we’re moving back to New England; and we moved to Newtonville, Massachusetts for a year and a half and then moved back to Evanston.
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My childhood was varied because my parents like to move. And back then they were renting houses after the war and stuff. So you know, they moved three times in New York – and they were only there a few years – to three places on Long Island. And then we moved out to Evanston, Illinois … which was a great city to really, you know, spend time, you know, in the school district. I mean, it was a great school district and I really enjoyed it. That’s where I met my husband.
And so …. I think that’s just, you know, I had to make friends every time I went somewhere because, you know, it was sort of hard. I was a shy person, but I somehow, you know, made enough friends and it got me through each of our moves. And then finally, when we moved to another … we moved to three different places in Evanston, but at least they were all in the same area, although different school districts. I knew quite a few students by the time I got to high school because of that.
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My parents, when they lived in New York, they had … they went to all those big Broadway musicals in the ‘40s, and they had all the albums, and they used to play some of the albums. And I took it upon myself to learn all the songs from all the shows that they had, which I really enjoyed. And they also listened to, of course, Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts. I was more my father that liked that, and he took me to the Boston Pops orchestra concerts in the summer when we lived in Boston – or near Boston. So that was really great too.
I played the flute. My father had played the violin in the band as he described – which doesn’t make a lot of sense because usually they’re in orchestras – but, you know, he played the violin, so he was the musical person in the family. And … but, you know, they never really listened to classical. They listen more to Leroy … I think his name was Leroy Anderson … who had a lot of mid–century – 20th-century – music.
I played the flute through the beginning of college – I think I was in the band the first year or two of college, maybe three years of college. So I was the musical person after that. And I like to sing. You wouldn’t believe I could sing with my voice I’ve got now, but, you know, I used to like to do that, too.
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We were lucky. My father working for Admiral Corporation made TVs. We got one of the early colour TVs and we were able to see the 1950s version, early ’50s version of Mary Martin in Peter Pan. Of course, it was mostly a green screen without much else in colour on there. But yes, I was very fortunate. So TVs were a big thing in our house, appliances, you know, things like that.
I had a record player in my bedroom when I was younger, certainly for junior high, which comes before high school. And I might have had it like in sixth grade, but I think it was more like junior high and high school. And I would be able to play music in my room, obviously, and liked doing so.
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My father used to collect autographs of famous people. And, I mean, he would just, well for instance, he would drive out and go to George Gershwin’s home on Riverside Drive in New York. And knocked on the door, and his secretary – Gershwin’s secretary – told him that Gershwin was at the theatre in downtown New York, and if he goes to that theatre, he will be able to interview him and get a photograph. So he got an autographed photograph, which I have today, and really appreciated that. So that’s what started out my interest in all of that stuff.
One time he wrote a postcard to F. Scott Fitzgerald in Paris and he didn’t hear anything for a while and then finally, he gets back a postcard from Paris with a picture of the … Fitzgerald’s favourite bar in Paris and it says, ‘I refuse to give you my signature and he signed it – F. Scott Fitzgerald’. So that’s what intrigued me.
I guess because my father tried it, I thought, maybe I’ll, you know, try it, too. But I didn’t do it to the extent that my father did. I mean, he wrote authors and he went and interviewed them and stuff like that. I mean, he made it into a story he could publish, you know, in the paper.
Of course, most of my people weren’t that famous. But if I really was interested in someone, I would try to get their autograph.
I just had certain people I wanted to get an autograph, you know, and, um, you know, I didn’t do that that much. I mean, I think I did it for Richard Chamberlain, the actor in the early ’60s because I loved Dr. Kildare, and I got an autograph picture from him. But, you know, I just sort of pick and choose if I, you know, had someone … and really no movie stars. I never wrote a movie star and asked for an autograph. So I probably wasn’t as into it as my father, but it shows that what, you know, the few times I did that somebody noticed so, you know…
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Well, it was I … didn’t have any idea what I was getting into. I really, to tell you the truth, it was many years ago in 1962 that I wrote the letter. And I’ve even forgotten about writing the letter, but you’ve reminded me, and it’s not surprising that I did write it, knowing my background.
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I had music appreciation class I took in college, but that was all classical, and I realised that I also like classical. They chose – I don’t know whether it was like seven or eight classical pieces? All very different.
We had Beethoven’s Third Symphony. We had a Brahms symphony, and we had Cesar Franck, who is an organist … was an organist and wrote an organ … which I just loved that one. That was great. Shostakovich, right, his Fifth. I love that. I thought that was a great one. So I had my favourites, and you know … We’ve also, as adults, you know, fairly recently, we were going to some chamber music concerts and a number of people were from the Chicago Symphony. And that was fun.
I mean, you really need to be exposed to it to appreciate it. And, you know, the fact that we had records going frequently in the home was very beneficial and made me motivated, you know, to, you know, know more … I mean, I was still listening to, you know, rock music, you know, in the early ‘60s, obviously, to mid-‘60s. But, you know, I knew that there was something else out there and … and I really enjoyed some of the pieces so, well, I wanted to know more.
My major was Zoology. Totally unrelated. Totally unrelated, really. I was in a, you know, a college that, you know, for Liberal Arts and I just felt that, you know, it would give me a good background and, you know, I’d never done that. I also took ‘Introduction to Speech’ too.
This was during the summer school because I transferred my college and I lost a lot of credits because they were on different course systems. And so I needed to make up over sophomore … the summer after sophomore year … in order to be entered as a junior – which was important because I was transferring to my husband’s college, De Paul University in Indiana, and I didn’t want to come in as a sophomore because he was a junior.
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I just enjoy his music. I mean, we have we have theatre tickets for a season every year in, you know, the nearby suburb. And it really is interesting because it showed that … they came up with wonderful wonderful West Side Story. They’ve done New York, New York, I think that was another one of his. Yeah, they always do those. They do a couple of, you know, Gershwin ones, Broadway shows and off you know, new Broadway shows or whatever. So yeah, and I always enjoy it.
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When it came to starting to go on cruises with my husband, we went on a lot of them. And I wanted to sing a song. I never have any voice lessons, and I wanted to sing a song in the passenger talent shows on cruise ships. And what song did I pick? ‘100 Ways to Lose a Man’ from Wonderful Town. Which, you know, many of the cruise directors said to me, ‘Whatever made you want to learn this song?’ And I said, ‘I love I love all the songs in that musical’, you know.