Helen Hodam, 93; soloist helped students find their voice
International acclaim as a mezzo-soprano was years away when Denyce Graves arrived at Oberlin Conservatory of Music in the early 1980s and asked around to find the best voice teacher.
"Everyone said, 'You want to get in with Miss Hodam,' " Graves recalled, and so she did, learning quickly that Helen Hodam lavished attention on every aspect of her students' lives.
"I remember going to my second lesson," Graves said. "I came into the room and she said, 'Your voice sounds different than in the first lesson, what were you doing last night?' I said, 'I went out with some friends and we were talking and laughing.' She said, 'You laughed the night before a lesson?' And I thought, 'What have I gotten myself into?' "
Reverence resonates in the voices of former students when they speak of Miss Hodam - and she was always Miss Hodam to them, even after they went on to careers and fame. They venerated her teaching, imitated her cooing voice, and perhaps secretly wished that they, too, would have the confidence to wear white go-go boots - even after reaching a certain age.
Miss Hodam, who still had a dozen students at New England Conservatory five years ago when a stroke ended her half-century teaching career, died of respiratory failure May 21 in the Neville Center at Fresh Pond in Cambridge. She was 93 and usually declined the offer of a seat on the Green Line as she commuted to work from her home near Coolidge Corner in Brookline well into her 80s.
"We all loved her, we really did," said Graves, who was among the students who followed Miss Hodam when she moved from Oberlin in Ohio to the New England Conservatory. "She was an enormous part of my life, and she's the reason I have a career today, without a doubt. There isn't anybody in the business who didn't know of her."
Like Graves, Lisa Saffer was hoping for an international career as a soprano when she met Miss Hodam at Oberlin.
"When I was young, I was extremely conflicted about being a singer," said Saffer, who also accompanied Miss Hodam to the New England Conservatory. "When I first went to her, I looked at Miss Hodam, a woman alone in a small town teaching voice, and thought, 'What if I end up like that?' By the time I was in my late 20s, I thought, 'I would be blessed to end up like that.' She had students who loved her. She had intellectual work that she loved. She took care of her body."
Indeed, Miss Hodam used herself as a tool when teaching voice students how to breathe properly.
"She would have you hold her tiny little waist and feel deep, diaphragmatic breathing," said Bradford Swing, a friend and lawyer in Boston who studied voice with Miss Hodam at Oberlin. "It was physically startling, what filled your hands - the athletic enormity of her diaphragm. She would breathe deeply and you would feel a lifelong development of those muscles, and you would appreciate the road ahead of you to develop those muscles."
The road to Oberlin, Boston, and teaching some of the best singers in the country began for Helen Grace Hodam in Ludlow, Ill., where she grew up on a farm, the youngest of six children. She studied voice and organ and graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University before heading to New York City for more study at Manhattan School of Music and Juilliard.
Though she was a soprano soloist with opera and summer theater groups, Miss Hodam "never really accomplished the career she wanted in singing," said her niece Nancy Marks of Knoxville, Tenn. "When she was about 40 years old, she took a major turn and decided to try teaching. She liked it and it became this wonderful career."
Miss Hodam received a master's in music from The Hartt School in Hartford, then taught at Mary Hardin-Baylor College in Texas and Muskingum College in Ohio before joining the Oberlin faculty in 1963. By 1984, when she retired from Oberlin, Miss Hodam had already been teaching part-time at New England Conservatory. There, as at Oberlin, her presence belied her size.
"She very rarely would sit down in a chair; she'd be more likely to be standing and watching the student breathe," said Robert Winkley, registrar at the conservatory and a former piano accompanist for her lessons. "If they weren't quite getting it in terms of projection, she would talk about putting a bite on the sound, and she would demonstrate. For a fairly diminutive woman, a big, bright, forward sound would emanate from her body. It was the kind of sound that you felt existed outside the body."
Miss Hodam's students benefited from more than her expertise. She kept her teaching fees low, telling students they should use their money for things such as living expenses. And if someone was strapped, "she gave students money - she loaned me money," Saffer said.
In turn, some former students who achieved successful careers gave back to Miss Hodam, knowing she would probably use the money to help others.
"When I was able to, I wrote as big a check as I could for voice lessons and said, 'If you don't want it, recycle it, because I know you're going to give someone else money,' " Saffer said.
With the frugality of her Midwestern farming ancestors, Miss Hodam lived simply on her teaching earnings and left a sizable estate.
She left part of it for New England Conservatory's music library to purchase vocal scores and recordings.
The remainder, in excess of $1 million, was left to Oberlin Conservatory to create the Helen Hodam Merit Scholarship in Voice. Miss Hodam insisted that "merit" be part of the name, Swing said, to ensure the recipients are able to sing.
Marks said family members will hold a memorial service at 2 p.m. Saturday at Glen Cemetery in Paxton, Ill., a few miles from Miss Hodam's childhood home, and will play a recording of Graves singing "The Lord's Prayer."
"She was a mighty woman, she was formidable," Graves said.
"She produced a lot of wonderful artists all over the globe who are having wonderful careers. We were her children and she gave her life for us. She gave us her life force, her energy, and her knowledge." 