Setting up parents Gloria and Edward Lindsay for the worst, doctors explained that their daughter, Jennifer, would struggle for the rest of her life because of brain trauma.
“My parents weren’t going to settle for that,” Jennifer said.
Her parents visited libraries and spoke to experts on ways to help their daughter’s mental and physical development. Gloria also quit her job as a school teacher to focus on Jennifer full time.
“They just never gave up and they just kept on going,” Jennifer said.
With the help of her parents, the now 29-year-old proved skeptics wrong by becoming a Renaissance woman of sorts.
The Long Beach resident sang a composition she wrote live for the first time at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut. The soprano performed with the West Covina Symphony Orchestra at the “East Meets West” concert on Saturday.
At the concert, she premiered her song, “End of Days,” from her self-released debut album, “Songs
In The Dark.”
The concert also included performances by Russian flutist Aleksandr Haskin, Grammy-nominated musician Jos Hern ndez and 15-year-old violinist Kristie Su – as well as guest conductor Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich.
Jennifer’s success began at an early age when she was enrolled in various activities – swimming at age 2, violin at 3, singing at 8, among others. She has received many awards and recognition, including an Essence Award in 1999 and for performing in the YouTube Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.
As a youngster, she also found success academically. Jennifer was able to read at a third-grade level when she was only 3 years old.
Gloria would tape flashcards to corresponding objects and have Jennifer identify what it was.
“We’d run around the house and read the words in English. Then, we’d run around the house and read the words in Spanish,” Gloria, 70, of Fountain Valley, said.
At age 13, Jennifer attended Orange Coast College. Later, she received a master’s degree in operations research at Columbia University and computer science at John Hopkins University.
“It seems it paid off. She’s independent, she takes care of herself – that was our goal,” her mother said.
Although some activities are now only memories of Jennifer’s youth, music has remained a passion of hers as an adult.
“The thing that made me stick to (music) the most was the ensembles I was in,” Jennifer said of herself as a child. “That really exposed me to other kids that were doing this. I think that’s what really kept me going – finding a peer group that was doing the same thing that I loved.”
Between performing in orchestras, work as a systems engineer in El Segundo, devoting time to family and friends, creating music and the like, Jennifer has managed to juggle each with a similar drive as her
parents.
“If it’s something I love and something I enjoy, I’m going to find a way to do it,” Jennifer said.
626-962-8811, ext. 2303
