Featured February 2023

I just want to play, so in the end, having a place to play and others to play with is what matters.

Growing up, there was always someone in Edie’s house playing an instrument. When she was just learning to read, she remembers standing in church by her mom, who was the church organist and also sang alto, and asking her how she knew what the next note would be. She showed Edie how the notes moved up and down on the little lines and how you followed along. “That’s when I started learning music.”

She’s lived in Cedaredge since she was 8. She has been playing flute since the 5th grade and started piano lessons that same year. In junior high school, she took lessons locally and then from Allen Porter in Grand Junction before heading to college in Nebraska. She came back to the area, got married, and started a family.

Edie first joined the VSA in the late 1980s. In the early 1990s she took a hiatus until 2010 when she started playing with the Montrose Community Band and then rejoined the VSA in 2014.

Her husband owned a machine shop for 37 years. Edie spent several years working with him and also in local restaurants. “I always said I would never own a restaurant. Then 13 years ago, my husband and I opened the Graystone Restaurant in Eckert!” They’re open a few days a month, cater, and do private house parties.

An interesting and inspiring fact about Edie: “Most people don’t know that, 10 years ago, I was paralyzed from the waist down from West Nile. The hardest thing I’ve ever done was learning to walk again.”