Completed last weekend.
The story begins at the outbreak of World War II. Scott was a student at the University of Washington. His roommate was a Japanese-American who was rounded up with other Japanese-Americans and incarcerated by the government as a security threat. So incensed was Scott at the affront to his friend that he refused to serve in the military, and he was eventually sentenced to prison at Washington’s McNeil Island.
One day, walking the grounds on a work detail, he noticed a fallen maple. On a whim, he asked the guard for permission to use the tree to build a violin. The guard gave him an odd look, as Scott now recalls, but said, sure, go ahead.
It was no small undertaking. Scott had taken a woodworking course in high school, but in the art of crafting a violin he had no experience, no teacher, no tools. He didn’t know how to play one, either. At the public library, his wife, Ruane, found a book on constructing violins. She typed up page after page of instructions. She traced schematic drawings and, over the months, mailed them to Scott.
Howard Scott’s unfinished sonata (Boston Globe, via Halloween Jack)
The Story of a Violin (RealAudio, Here & Now)
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