When the Tri-North Middle School band performed at Fairview Elementary in the fall of 2005, some of the band members asked Fairview students if they considered joining a band some day.

The students’ response was not music to the ears of then-first year Fairview teacher Kathy Heise.

“They asked students if they wanted to do something musically, and no one raised their hands,” Heise recalled. “I said, ‘Someone has to change that.’ But being new to the (Monroe County Community) School Corporation, I did not know where to start.”

Heise consulted with her counterpart at Binford Elementary, Sandy Hertling, and Hertling referred her to long-time friend Ilknur Ralston, a founding member and former president of the Board of Directors of the Community Foundation of Bloomington and Monroe County, Inc.  In December, 2000, Ilknur, her husband Bob and son, Nur established the Premo and Ralston Families Fund at the Community Foundation. The fund can support a range of charitable needs, and the Ralston-Premo family has favored education-related projects.

It did not take long for Heise to persuade Ralston to support a proposed after-school music program at Fairview.

“She had no doubt that this is something worth doing,” Heise said. “She was very supportive, very much in favor of doing this.”

Thanks to a grant from the Premo and Ralston Families Fund, 25 Fairview students are taking voice, piano, violin, guitar, trumpet, flute and percussion lessons. The grant provides instrument rental, storage and repair, as eight students from Indiana University’s renowned Jacobs School of Music and four Bloomington South students volunteer to assist with lessons.

According to Heise, this level of philanthropy is what makes Bloomington and Monroe County special.

“There are some great resources in Bloomington. A lot of people are willing to do a lot of things financially,” Heise said. “What the Community Foundation has done is give us a chance to start a program and continue it for the next three or four years.”

Of course, the lessons learned in this after-school program extend well beyond music.

“One of the things that we really work on at Fairview is responsibility and commitment and carrying through with your responsibilities and commitments,” Heise said. “They also have to sign a contract, so that they see what it is like to actually carry through with that commitment.  The first two or three weeks, I was calling students and parents and telling kids that they need to apologize to their teacher for cutting out on their lesson.”

The parents are appreciative in more ways than one.

“The parents say ‘I can’t believe that someone will do this for our kids and that we have this opportunity,’ ” Heise said. “I have one girl who is partially hearing impaired, and she is learning to play the flute. She loves it. Her mother said that we would never have been able to do this without this opportunity. They could not afford instrument rental and private lessons.”

Fittingly, the after school music program is a prime example of Ralston’s trend-setting, philanthropic influence.

“I am a member of St. Mark’s (United Methodist Church), and when I told the congregation about the music program, they decided to help with their Church and Society community,” Heise said. “They have already raised about half of the original grant money. So, we should be able to continue the program for about four or five years. Things just started to happen. It was amazing.”