Tribute: Sue Hufford brought out best in music students

Truth be told, it wasn’t always clear to Sue Hufford that her young music students at Mark West Union School District would be ready come performance day. Kids have a lot on their minds besides practice, she knew. They’re easily distracted.

But their teacher never let on. She never lost faith. And when the curtain went up, the results of Hufford’s gifts and dedication were revealed.

“This miracle, this magic, would happen,” said Ann Mary Ferguson, describing her close friend, who conducted and danced alongside her pupils with enough enthusiasm for everyone in the room. “It was just so fun to watch.”

Over the years, the mother of three taught about 200 students in kindergarten through eighth grade each year at four campuses in the Mark West Union School District, focusing on the older grades in recent years. She also filled in one day a week at Healdsburg’s Alexander Valley Elementary School.

She provided instruction in violin, cello, guitar, flute, recorder, band and choral music, rotating between campuses and working with students in different combinations and age groups at different times.

An energetic woman passionate about music and about young people, the Santa Rosa teacher all but raced through each day, coming and going from school to school and home again, where she mentored private music students after hours.

She also worked tirelessly through the Mark West Education Foundation to ensure funding for music and other programs, and was dedicated, as well, to her church family at Redwood Covenant Church, where she worked in the youth ministry and led weekly group meetings of young women.

One of several adults in the program, Hufford would start with the same number of girls as all the others each year but inevitably found her group growing out-of-balance, according to student ministries Pastor Dan Ferguson, Ann Mary’s spouse.

“The girls just wanted to be with her,” he said. “It happened multiple years. She invested in them. She cared about them.”

“Every evening was booked,” said Jenell Pardo, a friend and teacher at Mark West Elementary. “Oh, the woman was so busy. When she first passed, it took, I think, like five people to do what she was doing.”

Her death in a March 15 vehicle crash, alongside her mother-in-law, while they and their husbands were en route to celebrate Hufford’s 53rd birthday with dinner, was an enormous loss - most especially to her husband, Jay Hufford, and their college-age children Stephanie, Joel and Jeff.

But there were reverberations, too, at church and through the Mark West school community, where Hufford’s children went to school and where Hufford’s shifting role as parent, teacher and volunteer made for layered, special relationships.

A lifelong violinist and student of music education at the state universities in Fresno and San Jose, Hufford came to teaching only after working more than a decade as an accountant, after she played violin in her daughter’s class as part of a special talent day and learned of an opening. She taught for the district for 15 years.

Few could deny she brought something special to her job, combining compassion, humor and a love for music that proved contagious and engaging.

From the annual all-district spring concerts to sixth-grade promotion ceremonies, people were “amazed at what she could get out of those kids,” district Superintendent Ron Calloway said.

“I was always shocked that she could get 100 third-graders playing in unison on those recorders,” friend and teacher Lesley Van Dordrecht said. “And she just went into it like, ‘We can do this. You’re going to do this.’ And they did.”

“She brought music to life for those kids,” Calloway said. “And I never, never saw her ever get upset or flustered. She just had this calm about her that was amazing, and students responded with wonderful, wonderful music.”