Petite Pianist Takes Seniors Back in Time

Ninety-seven-year-old Shirley Brodsky looked pretty with her red hair and matching lipstick.

“We should get up and dance,” she announced. And they did.

In twos and threes, doing a soft shuffle or a slow dance, Nancy Rando, 81, Rose Brown, 84, and Starr Mitchell, 104, danced in the parlor-like living room of their Van Nuys retirement home recently, just like they did decades ago when “Camptown Races,” “When You’re Smiling,” and ragtime tap-a-long tunes were quick on the tips of their tongues.

“This music just brings something out of her,” said Francisca Acosta, 35, Mitchell’s caretaker. “Something about it makes her very, very happy.”

A few times a month, the aches of arthritis, osteoporosis and just tired old bones are soothed away when 10-year-old Ruby Fradkin takes a seat at the baby grand piano at the Garden at Park Balboa retirement home in Van Nuys.

“If you were in the room and you heard the piano, you’d swear it was an adult playing,” said Myra Sharken, 91. “She has a great touch.”

Ruby started piano lessons at 6 but abandoned formal training two years later in favor of a less rigid repertoire--something more “peppy” as she puts it.

Since going it alone, the Sherman Oaks Elementary School fifth-grader has been checking out music and CDs from the library to study the hits from the Roaring ‘20s through World War II. She even knows some traditional 19th-century folk songs and loves ragtime.

“I know these are the songs that they grew up with,” said Ruby, speaking of her elderly audience, whose average age is about 90. Her set list includes “Bicycle Built for Two” and such Leadbelly classics as “Ha Ha Thisaway,” and “Pick a Bale of Cotton.”

Ruby learned the magic of her music last year while playing at her grandfather’s retirement home in Massachusetts. Residents from all over the building followed the happy tunes to the center’s recreation room to enjoy the impromptu concert.

“They enjoyed it and were singing along,” Ruby said.

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Back home, seeing the joy that Ruby’s music brought the seniors, Ruby’s father, Chris Fradkin, contacted eight retirement homes in the San Fernando Valley, and she has been packing them in ever since.

“When [Ruby] comes, the room gets full,” said Julie Zepeda, activities director at Garden at Park Balboa. “I just have to say, ‘She’s coming,’ and then here they come.”

On a recent night, about 30 or so residents gathered after dinner in anticipation of the young pianist. She arrived, smiled, took a seat behind the baby grand and started to play. Within minutes, the room’s makeshift dance floor was hopping.

“There’s no pain! No pains right now!” said Zepeda as she playfully clapped along.

Homework curtails Ruby’s performances to twice a week on her retirement home tour, but she has to have something to fall back on: She thinks she might want to be a teacher someday.

But for now she’s an entertainer, plucking out ditties from memory and helping others remember times gone by.

“She grabs you by the throat,” with her playing, said Rando, who tapped her fingers in march time on her brown polyester pants. “Her music makes you feel at ease, like you are going up to heaven.”

Ruby’s volunteer work has been recognized by Gov. Gray Davis, Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks) and most recently by the Fox Kids Network which named Ruby a Fox Kids Hero, an honor given to young people who make a difference in their communities.

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