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Tampa piano teacher offers lessons for life

By John Barry, Times Staff Writer
In print: Sunday, June 8, 2008

Maestra Elba holds a musical note flash card up to Janell Pino, 9, during a lesson. She started giving lessons when she was 15.
	[MAURICE RIVENBARK | Times]

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ADVERTISEMENT [MAURICE RIVENBARK | Times] Student Gina Sardegna, 16, takes a lesson from her learned teacher, Elba Ruilova, who has been teaching piano for longer than most folks could imagine.

TAMPA

Ninety-five-year-old

Elba Ruilova is the tiniest thing, barely belt-buckle high. It's very easy to underestimate Elba Ruilova.

Her charms are deceptive. Such a sweet fragile soul, she always has a funny story ready. Like the time the roof leaked over the organ at Our Lady of Perpetual Help. No such thing as a rain check for Sunday Mass. Her fiance, Frank, had to hold the umbrella as she played Ave Maria.

But seat a child at the piano in her West Tampa home and she somehow grows a foot. Her eyes narrow with concentration, her ear tilts to the keys.

She abandons all disguises. She is again the strict perfectionist, the maestra, the piano teacher.

Maestra Elba began teaching piano at home in 1928, when she was 15 and the president was Silent Cal. Eighty years later, children still sit at her Chickering upright, as their plinks and plunks and a metronome's tick-tick-tick drift out the dented screen door.

•••

She has written down the story of her life. She has used one sheet of paper. She says, "I don't have time to waste."

She began teaching when she was still a piano student at the Academy of the Holy Names. Cigar factory workers brought over their children. She charged 50 cents an hour.

When late husband Frank asked her to dance in Ybor City 75 years ago, he touched her arm. "I felt electricity."

When Frank left to fight the war in Europe, she told him, "If you don't come back, I'm coming to get you."

In January 1977, she made Frank drive her to New York to see snow. When they got back, it snowed two-tenths of an inch. It shut down Tampa.

She and Frank had only one argument between their marriage after World War II and his death 20 years ago. He'd aggravated her so much she told him to leave the house, get out of her sight.

So he left the house, walked down to the corner to play dominoes. On his way back, he picked up a bolita ticket.

It paid $250.

For the rest of their marriage, Frank always told Elba, "Please, get mad at me! Throw me out of the house!"

When she turned 95 on April 3, she celebrated by playing the slots all night on $20 at the Seminole Hard Rock Casino.

•••

The Gonzalez children, Alberto, 12, and Isabella, 8, take lessons on Wednesdays, from 4:30 to 6. The pale green studio is not air-conditioned. The door to the street stays open.

The children dress as if for church. Alberto wears a neat blue polo. Isabella wears a pink dress and pink headband. They sit up straight.

They behave a little differently than at school, says their mother, Ana. They're a little more serious. As they wait their turn to play, they don't squirm; they listen. "She has an old style. They come with a different outlook."

When Alberto began lessons five years ago, Elba explained the house rules to him in plain language: "You do something good, I tell you."

Elba calls them both "honey."

"Slow down, honey."

"Curve your fingers, honey."

•••

Liana Fernandez Fox, professor of mathematics at Hillsborough Community College, took piano lessons from Elba back in, as she puts it, "19-Oh-Gosh." That would be the early '60s.

"My favorite part was always at the end," she recalls. "I'd have played something boring, and she'd say, 'Okay, now let me show you how it's going to sound after you've played a few years.' She made the piece sound like a symphony."

Life got in the way, and she never reached the symphonic stage. She still plays, but only those pieces she learned from Elba. By mutual agreement, she plays them when her husband is out of the house.

"I'll always remember her mantra," she says.

"It was, 'Curve your fingers, honey.' "

John Barry can be reached at (727) 892-2258 or jbarry@sptimes.com.