Piano man Don Roland says “there’s always something to do”

When Don Roland was a kid growing up in the city of Lancaster, he loved listening to music and longed to play the accordion. The odds were stacked against him as those were the years of the Great Depression, and family finances wouldn’t allow the luxury of a musical instrument and lessons.

As Don grew older, he was an adventurous guy—an Air Force fighter pilot in World War II and a flight instructor and commercial pilot in Texas. That was before he got married, embarked on an engineering career and began raising a family. Along the way, Don contracted polio in his left leg but didn’t let that interfere with his career and family life. And the musical itch never left him, because now he yearned to play the piano.

When he turned 50, with his daughter and twin sons grown, Don decided he would stop thinking about it and do it. He found a piano teacher, “a young guy half my age,” Don recalls, took lessons for four or five years and continued playing strictly for pleasure for a few more.

As happens with many professionals, though, Don’s work responsibilities encroached on his leisure time. In addition to his job in engineering, he worked part-time as a flight instructor at Lancaster Airport, just across the road from Brethren Village Retirement Community. He was busy and found less and less opportunities to play the piano. Before long, he wasn’t playing at all anymore.

In 1989 and living in Manheim Township, Don retired at age 65, but not completely—he continued his part-time work at the airport. He enjoyed his time there immensely for several more years, even though his piano playing days seemed to be over.

After moving with his wife, Pat, to Brethren Village’s independent residential community in 2010, Don made a discovery: pianos located across campus just waiting to be played. He had no more excuses and sat down to the keyboard once more. Then, in early 2016, he decided he would like the privacy of playing in his own home, so he bought a used piano and began taking lessons again. And that’s where you’ll find him every Tuesday afternoon, when one of his sons takes him to his teacher’s studio for instruction.

Today, at age 93, living in Village Manor personal care, Don practices piano about 20 hours per week. It has provided him with needed consolation when Pat died earlier this year. He says he likes playing “anything that’s tough,” because Don likes challenges. He was a fighter pilot turned engineer, after all.

Reflecting on his desire to learn to play as a middle-ager and continue now in his 90s, Don says, “You gotta’ stay busy. There’s always something to do.” In fact, if he wasn’t playing piano, he might have decided to learn a foreign language at a university. He believes, “If you don’t keep busy, you can end up wasting away.”

That’s something Don Roland will never do. Not this piano man.