I still clearly recall my first day in the lunchroom at Central High School in February of 1954. (Central had two graduating classes back then, one in January and one in June, so a new class started in February.) At the long table next to ours, one of the students eating lunch was an African American student in a wheelchair. Naturally, I was curious because he was the only student out of many hundreds in the dining room who was in a wheelchair.

Later that day I asked my brother Albert, who was three years ahead of me, if he knew who the boy in the wheelchair was. “Definitely,” he said. “That's Jimmy DePriest. He's in my (senior) class. He will be graduating in June. Everybody knows who he is. He is a really nice guy and a musical genius. He knows more than the music teachers. He is going to be famous one day.”

Because of my brother's comments, I went over to DePriest the next day in the lunchroom and asked if I could sit with him. He said yes, and I asked him lots of questions, which I guess is instinctive for a future journalist. He told me he was paralyzed because he had polio as a child. 

“I hope you do not mind this question,” I said, “but every time I look over at you, you are smiling, even though you are in that wheelchair. Excuse me if I am being rude, but how would you explain that?”

“I don't mind you asking because you are just saying what I know other people are thinking,” he replied. “I would love to be able to play baseball and football, like most of the other kids in this room, but there is nothing I can do about that, so there is no point in making myself miserable. On the other hand, we all have gifts and we all have shortcomings, so we have to concentrate on the gifts we do have instead of being sad over the things we do not have. 

“I have a gift for music, and I plan to have a fulfilling life full of great music. My aunt is Marian Anderson, the greatest contralto in the world, so how lucky am I? To be able to learn from her is a gift very few people have, and I am grateful every day to have it.”

DePriest told me his mother wanted him to be a lawyer, but his aunt Marian was subversive, always giving him orchestral scores and explaining everything a major musical career would bring him, including possible cases of racial discrimination. She told Jimmy he was “the son I never had.”

I proceeded to “pick his brain,” and even though I knew nothing about classical music until then, Jimmy's palpable exuberance whenever he talked about a Mozart sonata, Beethoven symphony or Verdi opera inspired me to listen to that music for the first time, which I have continued to do almost every day of my life since then. 

And James DePriest (he ditched “Jimmy” in his professional life) proceeded to have the storied career that was predicted for him. At the Philadelphia Conservatory, DePriest studied classical music composition under Vincent Persichetti, a renowned composer and Roxborough resident, while at the same time earning a BS in economics and a master's degree in communications from the University of Pennsylvania. 

Although he had to conduct from his wheelchair, DePriest, who grew up in South Philadelphia, won first prize in the Dimitri Mitropoulos International Conducting competition only two years after he graduated from Penn. During the competition, “the other candidates looked at me in braces and on crutches and thought, ‘Well, we can write him off,’” DePreist recalled in an interview with the New York Times in 1987. But he reached the semifinals, and the next year, he won. 

Then, Leonard Bernstein chose DePreist to serve as an assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic for the 1965-1966 season. Following a successful 1969 debut with the Rotterdam Philharmonic in Holland, DePreist began a series of appearances with European orchestras, including those in Amsterdam, Berlin, Munich, Stockholm, Stuttgart and several in Italy and Belgium.

DePriest was appointed associate conductor of the National Symphony in 1971. After five more years, the Quebec Symphony chose him as its music director until 1983, when he was named music director of the Oregon Symphony. He also brought a series of recording contracts to that orchestra to introduce its work to a world market. 

For his work on behalf of American music, DePriest was awarded the 2000 Ditson Conductors Award. In September 1999, the conductor revealed that he was suffering from kidney disease. He had a kidney transplant in 2001 and retired from conducting in 2003. He taught at the renowned Juilliard School of Music for the next eight years and was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President George W. Bush in 2005. 

In 2012 DePriest suffered a heart attack, which ultimately caused his death in 2013 at age 76. (DePriest was survived by his wife, Ginette, and two daughters, Tracy and Jennifer, from his first marriage, to Betty Childress.) But I, and I'm sure many others, will never forget the wheelchair-bound kid who inspired so many others throughout his life to fall in love with great music. 

Len Lear can be reached at lenlear@chestnuthilllocal.com