An 84-year-old pianist who was once paralyzed by a rare neurological disorder has made good on a promise to return to the Pennsylvania nursing home that helped her recover, performing regularly for residents who are themselves healing from illness, surgery, and injury.
Bonnie Fay first arrived at Bryn Mawr Village as a patient after Guillain-Barré syndrome, a condition in which the immune system turns on the body's own nerves, left her unable to move. She faced a long and uncertain recovery, and during those difficult weeks she turned to the instrument she had known since childhood.
"I found that the piano was very good for me," Fay told Good News Network. "It lifted my spirits tremendously."
Somewhere in that stretch, according to Good News Network, she made herself a promise: someday she would come back and play there. She has now kept that word, and she has been a patient at the facility not once but twice. The first stay followed a series of about seven orthopedic surgeries.
"Bryn Mawr Village helped me through some very hard times, and I never forgot that," Fay told Good News Network. "When I wanted to come back and play, they arranged to pick me up and bring me here. That meant a great deal to me."
Fay was born in Philadelphia and grew up in South Jersey and Penn Valley. She started studying piano at age 7, in a household where music was part of daily life.
"I came from a musical family," she told Good News Network. "My mother had a beautiful, trained voice."
After high school she studied under Louis Kazze, who was then director of music at Overbrook High School, and the two worked together for close to three decades. Fay later spent many years teaching piano herself, traveling to students' homes regardless of the weather.
At Bryn Mawr Village, her playing draws a quiet audience. Some residents move their chairs closer to listen; others stay behind once the music ends to talk with her, and several have become friends who call to discuss music and life outside the facility.
Medical problems kept Fay away from the piano for roughly 10 months, and when she came back, residents were eager to hear her again.
"Bonnie was a patient here twice, and now she's the person our residents look forward to seeing," Charles Light of Bryn Mawr Village told Good News Network. "When she was away for those 10 months, people kept asking when she was coming back. That tells you what she means to this place."
The piano that once carried Fay through her own recovery now serves the same purpose for others. She sits at it regularly, offering the comfort of music to residents navigating their own rehabilitation.
"I came here as a patient, and now I can give something back," Fay told Good News Network.
