Wake up Singing!

My Life with Mary Helen Richards and Education Through Music

Wake Up Singing is the story of Mary Helen Richards and her revolutionary approach to teaching, Education Through Music. Written after her death by her husband, Cedric Ricky Richards, and edited by their children, it is a both a love story and a history. It tells the story of their lives over the course of more than half a century together as they worked and played, suffered and rejoiced through the birth, growth and development of their children and their work, ETM and the Richards Institute of Education and Research. To Rickys long narrative, written during the four years before he too moved on to join his beloved Mary Helen, their children have added some of Mary Helens and Rickys personal writings about the years before they met, as well as love letters from their courtship, and an epilog about the last years of their lives. Telling the story of the dedication and love of life that made their work possible, this book is a testimony to the way a shining intent can unfold through doubt and delight, anguish and adventure, into reconciliation and beyond