Jane Fenimore Cello Scholarship

Jane H. Fenimore grew up in Laramie Wyoming, as Jane McFarlane Holliday, the youngest of five children of Frank Alan and Laura Breisch Holliday. From the time she was very young, she was involved in music, studying both the piano and the cello, the latter of which became the instrument she played into her late eighties. Jane graduated from the University of Wyoming as a cello major in the school of music, and spoke often of her days there and the wonderful education she received. She continued her studies at Colorado College and the New England Conservatory of Music, and became a professor of cello at Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania, where she met her husband, Richard E. Fox, with whom she had two girls, Laura and Kathy. “Dick” died tragically in 1961, and in 1965 she married Mitch Fenimore, with whom she lived happily until his death in 1997. Jane taught cello and other stringed instruments in the North Penn School District (Lansdale, PA), and also had many private students, whom she continued to teach after her retirement.

Jane was an amazing teacher, and loved her students. She was patient but firm, and had high standards, but made learning fun. She was passionate about teaching, but managed to do it with a sense of fun and with a style to which kids responded and excelled. Many of her students went on to professional music careers and wrote her later in life to tell her that she taught them to love not just music, but learning itself.