My mother was impressed and picked up a little violin, I guess at some little rummage sale somewhere, and decided that I should learn to play the violin. Even though I had never seen anyone play the violin in public, he came to our house and started giving me some little simple lessons on playing the violin. I was coming along fairly well by the time we graduated from the eighth grade in grammar school, and for the graduation exercises held in the high school I was asked to play a violin solo. My sister who was four years older than I and was then one of the popular girls in high school was my pianist. At the graduation exercises, Connie McMurray was the valedictorian.
Girls are always smarter in school than boys.
As she was giving the valedictory address, there was a little pedestal with a pitcher of water and a glass on it for the school board. The school board was on the stand, plus a little handful of us who were graduating from the eighth grade. Connie McMurray fell in a dead faint. In the scurrying around of cleaning the water off the stage and rearranging the chairs, they announced that we would now have the violin solo from David Haight. I walked over to the little old piano, and my sister came up from the audience.