Lauderdale: Rubilee Knight helped music soothe Beaufort's soul
Music always soothed the soul of Rubilee Pike Knight.
Her daughters say it saved her life when her husband died unexpectedly when she was 57.
"It gave her a social outlet," said Ann Knight Roth.
That outlet helped give her hometown of Beaufort a symphony orchestra and youth orchestra. Today's orchestra began in the 1980s as a few violinists meeting weekly, including Rubilee, former Lt. Gov. Brantley Harvey Jr., Janet Sawyer and Jerry DeTreville.
Music gave her grandson, Johnny Irion, a career in rock 'n roll. And it gave him an avenue for social activism at the microphone beside his wife, Sarah Lee Guthrie, whose father, Arlo, and grandfather, Woody, defined the genre.
It gave her son-in-law Thomas Steinbeck, husband of Gail and son of novelist John Steinbeck, a reason to dedicate his first novel, "In the Shadow of the Cypress," to Rubilee. Steinbeck called her "heaven's testimony that angels live among us."
Rubilee's parents owned the Sea Island Hotel on Bay Street. She began taking violin lessons at age 8 from a French woman. Her sister, Mary Pike Patterson, learned piano and ended up with a degree from Julliard.
Rubilee studied nursing at Duke University, where she met a football player from New Jersey named Fred Palladino. They were married and he changed his name to Knight to avoid discrimination down South.
He was a businessman with a beautiful tenor voice that he shared with barbershoppers and the choir at the Baptist Church of Beaufort. They thought their four girls -- Ann, Gail, Patti and Terry Lee -- were going to be the next Andrews Sisters.
Music soothed Rubilee's soul as she traveled across the sea islands in her Ford Falcon as a well-baby home health nurse. She recorded midwives singing spirituals to women in labor. And she saw poverty that drummed up her senses of philanthropy and social activism.
Rubilee played in the "chamber orchestra" that gathered on Sunday afternoons at the home of the late Judge Thomas Kemmerlin, whose intellect and repartee boosted Rubilee's spirits.
Rubilee's girls were here when she died peacefully on June 27 at age 89. At her funeral Tuesday at the Baptist Church of Beaufort, her friend Olive Warrenfeltz played her favorite piece, "Meditation from Thais."
And a song by Johnny Irion and Sarah Lee Guthrie about the Confederate flag at the South Carolina Statehouse was getting renewed attention. "Gervais" was written shortly after the flag came off the Capitol Dome in 2000, but remained visible on the grounds along Gervais Street. The Southern Poverty Law Center was recirculating the song as the state legislature considers removing the flag altogether in the wake of a racist killing of nine African Americans worshiping in Charleston on June 17.
Rubilee would have been at peace with the hope that "Gervais" will go viral.
She knew that music always soothes the soul.
Follow columnist and senior editor David Lauderdale at twitter.com/ThatsLauderdale and facebook.com/david.lauderdale.16.
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This story was originally published June 30, 2015 at 12:47 PM with the headline "Lauderdale: Rubilee Knight helped music soothe Beaufort's soul."