Member Profile - meet Rita Leighton
Rita has been a long term supporter of October Books and is one of our many Community Share holders. Rita has spent her entire life teaching and she has kindly offered to do three ‘Listen with Rita’ sessions over the summer, reading to under 4 and 5 to 7 year olds and anyone else who wants to listen. She’ll be in the children’s section of the shop on Saturday 17th, 24th and 31st August from 10.30am for an hour.
Rita has retired from class teaching now but taught infants at first and then after her son was born she attained an LRAM in General Musicianship and taught music at St. Anne's and piano at home.
At St.Anne's there were a lot of lunchtime activities outside of class teaching, including wind band and junior strings, and the steel band, which played at events such as other schools' garden fetes, old peoples' homes, and even to provide music at the reception for the new Vice Chancellor at the University of Southampton.
Rita was also very involved in the Musicals at the school, training the orchestra to play for them, and then taking over as Musical Director when the Head of Department went on maternity leave halfway through the preparation for "Kiss Me Kate". After this Rita went on to Direct "Oliver", "My Fair Lady" and "Guys and Dolls"
Rita’s instrument of choice is the violin which she have played from the age of 14 and has performed in all sorts of orchestral combinations, from a little dance band in the '50s to the Southampton Concert Orchestra from 1964 to the present day.
Rita says ‘What I've loved most of all is playing in the pit for shows. There were four amateur operatic societies in the area, Southampton, Eastleigh, Waterside and Winchester, and they all needed an orchestra for their performances, so there was always plenty to do. For many years I played the violin, but then one year had an opportunity to play drums because Eastleigh were doing a Gilbert & Sullivan and their usual percussion player wouldn't do it because there wasn't enough to do, so I offered and was told ok, if I could get a replacement violin, which I did, and never looked back.’
Rita has also been active in local Labour arty in the '80s, '90s, and '00s and from the '80s onwards have been very active in my local Quaker Meeting.
Many thanks Rita for sharing some of your story, for offering to come and read to children in the shop and for being such an enthusiastic October Books supporter.
Look out for more of our member stories in the coming weeks.
