Posted: 2:28 p.m.Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2014

Ramsdell’s life ‘centered around music’

By Rick McCrabb

Staff Writer

MIDDLETOWN — 

    One of Middletown’s most recognizable andappreciated voices has gone silent.

    Helen Gerber Ramsdell, who taught voicelessons for more than 90 years, died Tuesday at Mount Pleasant Retirement Village. She was 107.

    She was a voice instructor for thousands ofstudents since she was 16. Ramsdell taught voice lessons to students at herhome on Central Avenuein Middletownfor many years and at Miami University Middletown for 10 years after herhusband, Robert, died in 1964.

    “I just like to teach people to sing,” shesaid in a 2009 interview. “I just like to see the difference in their voicesfrom the time they came, and how strong they get. It’s so nice to take a voiceand see it improve; get stronger and stronger, and work on the quality.”

    Martha Johnson, 77, said her mother’s“whole life was centered around music.”

    Just hours before she died, Ramsdell wasvisited by the Rev. Greg Gibson, pastor at First Presbyterian Church on Central Avenue in Middletown. He readscripture, sang Christmas carols and asked Ramsdell if she ever conductedHandel’s Messiah.

    Then he sang, “Hallelujah,” and Ramsdell,right on cue, started conducting, Johnson said.

“Shelived her life right to the end,” her daughter said.

    Johnson made the eight-hour drive from herhome in northern Michigan to Monroe in time to say good-bye to her mother.She sat at her bedside and held her hand until she passed away.

    “It was a beautiful thing,” Johnson said.“She went in peace.”

    Ramsdell, who moved to Middletownto live with her paternal uncle, Dr. David Gerber, graduated from Middletown High Schoolin 1925 and later from Western College for Women in Oxford. She attended the College Conservatoryof Music in Cincinnati and traveled to Italy with   Dr. Gerber and his family in 1930-31 to studyat the renowned La Scala opera in Milan.

    She served as music director of the First BaptistChurch in Middletownfor nearly four decades (1933-1972), taught at Miami Universityfor 10 years, and was the choral director for the Middletown School of Nursing.

    Memorial services will be 1 p.m. Saturday,Jan. 3 at the First Presbyterian Church. Burial is at Woodside Cemetery.In memoriam, contributions may be sent to the Middletown Symphony Orchestra,Helen Gerber Ramsdell Scholarship Fund, the First Baptist Church Music Fund, orthe First Presbyterian Church Music Fund.