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Interviews by Topic: Music

Clarice LaVerne Thompson, Faculty

In this interview, Clarice LaVerne Thompson discusses her educational and professional path to becoming a visiting professor in Africana Studies and Music Director at Brown University, and founder of RPM Voices of Rhode Island. 

Diane Straker, Staff

In this oral history captured over the course of four interviews, Diane Straker, the Pembroke Center’s administrative assistant, details her experiences living in various states along the eastern seaboard and in Saint Thomas, her daughter’s struggle with Crescentic Glomerulonephriris, and working at Brown University.

Gwyneth V. Walker, class of 1968

This interview comes from a career forum for music students held at the Orwig Music Building with Gwyneth Walker in Providence, Rhode Island on December 5, 1997. Walker speaks primarily of her life in Vermont, her successful career as a composer, and the challenges of the art form, but does reflect occasionally on her impactful time spent at Pembroke College. She notes that she initially entered Pembroke with the intention of studying physics and following in her physicist father’s footsteps, but then quickly changed to pursue her love of music.

Karen T. Romer, Staff

In this interview, Karen T. Romer, a Brown University administrator of 29 years, describes life for women on campus between 1972 and 2001, as well as her own experiences in postwar Europe in two separate years before college during the 1950s.

Stavroula James Balomenos, class of 1953

In this interview, Stavroula James Balomenos begins by describing her childhood in Portland, Maine, which consisted of “home, school, and church.” She tells of her father’s strong belief in the value of a good education—something he didn’t have the opportunity to receive—instilling the message with all his children that “education was the doorway to a good life.” He refused to give his daughters a dowry but rather chose to pay for their educations.