Delaware

Music education offers young people a path to resilience, empathy and hope

Published

2 years ago

February 18, 2024

Press Room

Music education offers young people a path to resilience, empathy and hope

Stephen Beaudoin
| Guest columnist

Right now, it’s far too easy to find another reason to wake up scared, resentful or angry.

The start of a long-slogging election year. The horrifying images that roll in across our social media feeds from the Middle East. The price of literally anything at the grocery store ($7 for a dozen eggs? I’m seething).

Public polling tells us we can’t get along across differences, we don’t trust our government, and we feel more socially isolated than ever. Some suggest that democracy is at stake and our planet is on fire.

Whoa — this all feels very apocalyptic! Perhaps I should do less late-night doom scrolling.

Truth be told, these issues worry me. What kind of planet and human experience are we leaving for the next generation? I think often of my nieces, 19 and 12. I think of all the kids I spend time with as an honorary uncle.

What also worries me is how we’re treating one another, kids and adults alike. I worry about how our daily interactions as humans move us toward or away from cultivating an appreciation for our shared humanity.

This all makes me wonder: What does our world need most from us, right now?

I’ve been thinking about this for some time, working as I have at the intersection of music, education and social impact for 22 years now.

So, I’ve developed a hypothesis:

What’s needed most is more integrity and honesty. More attention to our internal and collective moral compasses. More authentic care. More empathy.

What I mean to say is: more development of our uniquely human qualities of character and more appreciation for our shared humanity.

It turns out that music education is a powerful tool to teach and model this.

Cultivating kids and adults committed to developing strengths of character and finding our shared humanity is part of the personal mission I bring as someone new to Delaware.

On Feb. 5, I began as the new president and CEO of The Music School of Delaware. This role is an incredibly special opportunity to steward the Music School into its next century of impact.

At The Music School of Delaware, we connect with thousands of kids and adults in six locations across Delaware — from Newark and Wilmington to Milford, Seaford, Hockessin, and Lewes. Through music classes, ensembles, lessons, concerts and other creative experiences, we bring people together across differences to listen and learn about themselves, each other, and the world around them.

While it’s true that we teach guitar, violin, voice, orchestra, music history, strings for pre-K kids and more, that’s not all we practice and teach at the school.

I believe that a core part of what we teach and practice at The Music School is developing qualities of personal character.

Not only what it means to be creatively curious and artistically excellent, but also what it means to be kind and resilient. To be selfless. To be a generous helper. To be brave.

What does generosity look like when you’re creating music with other humans? What does bravery feel like when you’re tracing an improvised melody over a complex jazz chart? What do kindness and resilience look like when you try and fail at a new song?

Futurists predict our most in-demand human capabilities to power the 21st century are digital literacy, data literacy, and critical thinking. Let’s make sure our young people index strongly in these areas.

But those capabilities alone are not enough.

Our young people also must be equipped with a sense of right and wrong; with a strong moral compass and commitment to honesty and integrity; with well-developed hearts and souls.

At The Music School of Delaware and in all communities of learning and formation, we must support this type of intentional development of qualities of character: this fostering of an appreciation for our shared humanity. We must talk and think about it.

And — hardest for us all, especially today — we must model it.

Stephen Beaudoin is the new president and CEO of The Music School of Delaware. He has a 20-plus year career in organizational transformation and change in the performing arts and holds a bachelor of music degree from New England Conservatory of Music and an MBA from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business.

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Delaware

MERR responds to dead humpback whale washed up near Bethany Beach

Published

8 hours ago

January 9, 2026

Press Room

MERR responds to dead humpback whale washed up near Bethany Beach

A dead humpback whale washed up near Bethany Beach on Jan. 8, according to the nonprofit Marine Education Research and Rehabilitation Institute.

The juvenile male was first seen Jan. 6, floating at sea about 2 miles off the Indian River Inlet, a MERR Facebook post said. The bloated 30-foot whale ultimately beached near a private community in the early afternoon of Jan. 8, the post said.

MERR is attempting to coordinate with the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control to get equipment to move the whale out of the water and onto the beach to perform a necropsy, the post said. Right now, there isn’t enough information to determine a cause of death.

Delaware saw at least three dead whales last year, in the Indian River Bay, at Delaware Seashore State Park and at Pigeon Point. The first two were humpbacks, while the Pigeon Point whale was a fin whale.

A necropsy on the Delaware Seashore whale found blunt force trauma across its back, indicating it may have been struck by a ship, MERR Director Suzanne Thurman said.

Recently, on Jan. 4, a dead fin whale was found on the bow of a ship at the Gloucester Marine Terminal in New Jersey, which is located in the Port of Philadelphia on the Delaware River.

Shannon Marvel McNaught reports on southern Delaware and beyond. Reach her at smcnaught@gannett.com or on Facebook.

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Delaware

Pa. man accused of stealing more than 100 skeletons from Delco cemetery

Published

20 hours ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

Pa. man accused of stealing more than 100 skeletons from Delco cemetery

A Pennsylvania man is accused of stealing more than 100 skeletons from a cemetery in Delaware County.

Jonathan Gerlach, 34, of Ephrata, Pennsylvania, is charged with abuse of corpse, criminal mischief, burglary and other related offenses, Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse revealed on Thursday, Jan. 8.

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Between November 2025 and Jan. 6, 2026, 26 mausoleums and underground burial sites had been burglarized or desecrated at Mount Moriah Cemetery, which stretches from Yeadon Borough, Pennsylvania, to Philadelphia, investigators said.

As police investigated the thefts, they caught Gerlach desecrating a monument at the cemetery on Tuesday, Jan. 6, according to officials. Gerlach was taken into custody and investigators executed a search warrant at his home in Ephrata.

During the search, investigators recovered 100 human skeletons from Gerlach’s home as well as eight more human remains inside a storage locker, according to Rouse.

“Detectives walked into a horror movie come to life the other night guys,” Rouse said. “This is an unbelievable scene that no one involved – from myself to the detectives to the medical examiners that are now trying to piece together what they are looking at, quite literally – none of them have ever seen anything like this before.”

Rouse said some of the stolen skeletons are hundreds of years old.

“We are trying to figure out exactly what we are looking at,” Rouse said. “We quite simply at this juncture are not able to date and identify all of them.”

Rouse also said some of the skeletons are of infants and children.

“It is truly, in the most literal sense of the word, horrific,” Rouse said. “I grieve for those who are upset by this who are going through it who are trying to figure out if it is in fact their loved one or their child because we found remains that we believe to be months old infants among those that he had collected. Our hearts go out to every family that is impacted by this.”

Sources also told NBC10 the thefts are related to a similar case in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. Investigators said they are looking at Gerlach’s online community — including his social media groups and Facebook page — to determine if people were buying, selling, or trading the remains.

Gerlach is currently in custody at the Delaware County Prison after failing to post $1 million bail. Online court records don’t list an attorney who could speak on his behalf.

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