Samuel Schwehm, a freshman at Colby College in Waterville, has played the piano since he was in the third grade. Over the years he has had several teachers, including Nadine Bowder, Barbara House and Gertrude Karger. Like young Mozart, Schwehm not only progressed as a pianist in both talent and technique, but also in ability to compose music.

Schwehm’s Colby studies this past fall have greatly limited his output as a composer. However, they have hardly diminished his involvement in music. Living in a Colby dormitory with others, like him talented musically, Schwehm has joined with a group of dorm friends to form an “informal” band. Still his free time is scarce. As a first year student, Schwehm carries a full schedule of courses including music theory, calculus and sociology. He also belongs to the college’s Chamber Music Choir and a Frisbee team. Next year, as a sophomore, Schwehm plans to declare music as his major with a minor in English.

From the fifth grade until he was age 16, like many of the region’s musically gifted, Schwehm studied piano under Gertrude (Trudi) Karger. In fact, Karger was so proud of Schwehm’s abilities, that upon her death, she bequeathed to him her Mason and Hamlin piano. Most appropriately, therefore, Schwehm has been the recipient of the Boothbay Region Student Aid Fund's “Ralph and Gertrude Karger Music Scholarship.”

Born in 1909 on Long Island, N.Y., Gertrude Anstey, a talented pianist and piano teacher, first visited the Boothbay Region in the summer of 1947. It was here, at an Ocean Point resort called “The Villa,” where Anstey fell in love with Ralph Karger, a distinguished architect who designed electrical power stations, but also houses. After their marriage, they moved to Boothbay in 1955. Like her husband, Gertrude Karger had built a distinguished career, first as a student of the piano and then, rather than in performance, as a great teacher. A graduate of the famous and prestigious Julliard School in New York, Karger learned from great teachers who themselves had studied under such great pianists as Franz List and Arturo Rubenstein. Indeed, through her teachers Trudi traced her own musical lineage, especially her pedagogical technique, ultimately back to none other than Ludwig Van Beethoven.

Karger taught piano for 80 years, many of those years in the Boothbay region. Ninety-eight years old when a stroke suddenly took her life, ending a long and marvelous teaching career, Karger was still active giving piano lessons to local Boothbay region students. One of her final pupils described her as “a rare gem.” To the good fortune of the Boothbay region, this gem just happened to plant her roots in a small coastal Maine fishing village.

Her legacy survives in the Ralph and Gertrude Karger Music Scholarship Fund, and in her many students, one being Samuel Schwehm.

The Boothbay Region Student Aid Fund (BRSAF) is currently in the midst of its annual fund drive. The Ralph and Karger Music Scholarship Fund is one of the BRSAF’s 54 “Named Scholarships.” Contributions to the BRSAF can be sent to P.O. Box 293, Boothbay Harbor, ME 04538. For more information on the BRSAF, go to www.boothbayharborstudentaidfund.org.