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February 2001

She walks like she could be Miss America this year, after being Miss Omaha a while back. She has the grace of the lifelong athlete. The easy certainty of someone in sales. The disarming likability of someone frequently elected queen of things by her peers when she was a high school girl.

Marcia Hinkle is one of those women who came of age at a time in the 1950s when it was possible to be cool and to be good at lots of things in lots of ways, without being stuffy or conceited: to be healthy, athletic and good looking, to achieve in school, to be popular with the kids, a team player, a credit to your family and your class and crowd, and among other things, a talented musician.

Marcia Hinkle's distinctions are legion. Currently, she has played in the Omaha Symphony longer than any of her peers. She started in 1958, when she was a student at Omaha University. "I think this is my 42nd year," she says modestly, looking like, one concludes, she must've started fiddling in the delivery room.

It's fun to hear her talk about the variety of her life, not bragging, just a life lived fully. Not only has she played the violin as a contracted per-service violinist, (sort of permanent part-time) but she's also served on the Omaha Symphony Guild Board and was a top Symphony ticket seller for a number of years.

She began playing violin in third grade, after a teacher discovered her musical abilities on the tonette. She skipped fourth grade.

Marcia was concertmaster of the North High School Orchestra and the All-City Orchestra, then later, at the Omaha University Orchestra. Sam Thomas, the North High orchestra director, got her to play flute, but it made her dizzy. She admires wind players.

She played tennis competitively, interscholastically and in tournaments. One of her children, Scott, became a tennis pro.

Like a lot of musicians, and athlete, she plays with pain in muscles and joints.

In 42 years with the symphony, she's witnessed more than anyone else associated with the Symphony, in its transformation from what amounted to an avocational community orchestra, to a highly professional, musically sophisticated organization.

"I don't feel I'm on the same par with the core people," she says of her full-time colleagues. The highlight of her symphony experience, she says, is "The privilege of playing beautiful music with wonderfully talented musicians, every one of whom I adore."

The professionalism and quality of playing, the repertoire have changed a lot, but one event in Omaha Symphony history that can strike her dumb was the strike of 1975. She pauses. There is pain in her voice when she resumes. A lot of people were let go. She doesn't really want to talk about it.

But she will talk about how much better communications between musicians and management are, now that there is, in part thanks to her effort, the Symphony Orchestra Committee, which is supposed to maintain rapport among board, conductor, management and musicians. "Unhappy musicians don't make beautiful music," she says, not so cryptically.

Her own tastes in music run to the symphonic, light classics, orchestral music and piano.

"I love playing in an orchestra, but I never enjoyed being a solo violinist," she says.

Clearly the camaraderie and teamwork turn her on as a musician. She describes soloists who can't do the job in the group."It's kind of a special niche," she says.

Her profession now is real estate. In fact, she's the Real Estate Agent who sold homes to some of her colleagues in the Omaha Symphony. She is in business with her husband Don.

"I wanted to be an attorney, but women didn't do that much then," she says, a little wistfully. "I became a teacher, which is what my parents wanted me to do." Her parents were a Storz brewery employee and a housewife. She did them proud.

She married in college, and taught school as a young wife, then stayed home with her three children while making her mark in a number of civic, athletic and social organizations: Junior League President, UNO Alumni Board member, PTA President, Omaha Playhouse Board & Executive Board Member, and Omaha Tennis Association Board Member.

Now her children are grown. Stacy has an MBA with three children of her own, doing accounting for small businesses; Scott, the former tennis pro, is now a medical equipment sales representative; Shelly is a corporate account representative with a local cellular company.

For years, Marcia played with the Myron Cohen String Quartet, now she plays with the Midlands String Quartet with Symphony musicians Molly Moriarty, Chris Hake and Margaret Lim.

She loves playing Beethoven's Ninth, and she also has a good grip on what it takes, the sacrifice of being a pro, even if you're a semi-pro.

"You give up a lot when you play in the orchestra, a lot of time in the evenings and on weekends" she says. She thanks her family for sacrificing her to those many evenings and special times so she could participate for decades "in one of my greatest loves - making music."

Reprinted from the Omaha Symphony Program book with permission from:
Omaha Symphony
1605 Howard St.
Omaha, NE 68102-2705
phone: 402-342-8565
email: bravo@omahasymphony.org
website: www.omahasymphony.org

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