FAYETTEVILLE — During its 131-year history, St. Scholastica Monastery operated 12 music schools. The Benedictine sisters who taught there, including Sisters Valeria Moellers and Rosarita Huber, and deceased Sisters Mildred Dunn, Jeannette Yaeger and Marie Huber, among others, educated thousands of music students in the River Valley.
In 1991, when most of the music teachers had retired, Sister Valeria’s eyesight began failing, and she decided to organize the monastery’s music collection, hoping that it would benefit students in the future.
She and Sister Berniece catalogued more than 3,600 audio recordings, including classical, Christian, popular and folk; 378 play scripts, 630 books and 3,644 musical scores and sheet music, including many rare and priceless pieces.
In 2008, Sister Christine Eckart, OSB, who was serving as the monastery procurator, looked for a site to donate the collection where it could be enjoyed by future generations. Janet Fuller, a former music student who serves on St. Scholastica’s Vocation Advisory Board and the Mashburn Scholarship Foundation board in Fayetteville, told Sister Christine that the foundation, which provides music scholarships to talented and needy students at the University of Arkansas, would be interested in housing the collection.
When Barbara Mashburn, CEO of the Mashburn Scholarship Foundation, saw the scope of the collection, she realized her facility didn’t have enough room and asked University of Arkansas Chancellor G. David Gearhart if it could be housed in the University of Arkansas Mullins Library.
The university moved the collection in the spring 2008 and began an almost two-year cataloguing and restoration process, culminating in the dedication of the Dr. James D. Mashburn Music Library Jan. 14 at the University House on the University of Arkansas campus.
Gearhart, who was taught by the Benedictine sisters at St. Joseph School in Fayetteville until ninth grade, thanked the sisters for their gift.
“Our cultural heritage has value even if it can’t be measured in dollars and cents,” he said. “It will be available for historians, music students and folklorists.”
Sister Maria DeAngeli, OSB, St. Scholastica Monastery prioress, said, “The scores of music that has been donated to this foundation speaks volumes of the sisters of our community who taught music to girls and boys, women and men over the past 125 years or more. Some of these have profited by going into musical careers.”
Carolyn Allen, dean of the University of Arkansas Libraries, gave the sisters a big “shout out.”
“It will add breadth and depth to existing collections. It will be heavily used,” she said.
When the library database is completed, each piece donated by St. Scholastica to the Mashburn Foundation will be acknowledged, and links to the foundation and monastery Web sites will be listed.
Mashburn, who named the library after her late husband, Dr. James D. Mashburn, said, “Doc would be so proud. He’d say, ’Barb, you’re filling the little niche that no one else is doing.’ They’ve got music from the 1800s — catalogued and kept.”
