The Hill Family Piano!

We are the Hill Family. My name is Charmay and my husband is Aaron. We have 4 kids, Andrew (22) and his wife Makayla (21), Kaison (15) and Lily (10). I grew up in a very musical family. My father played piano and organ, my siblings and I all played the piano, sang in choirs and the piano, and mom was the official driver and schedule coordinator. My husband is a very accomplished flutist. He played with the Granite Youth Symphony and Mormon Youth Symphony. He started playing the flute when he was 8 years old. He would practice for hours and he loved it. When we started dating my father started arranging church hymns for voice, flute, piano and organ. We had found a beautiful way to share our love of music and the gospel all in one. When my husband and I got married I moved out of my parents house and quickly realized, I didn't have access to a piano and us starving college newly weds couldn't afford one. We would visit my parents on the weekends and spend most of our time in the piano room playing piano, singing, laughing and some times crying. Fast forward a few years, my uncle unexpectedly pass away. He was never married and did not have any children of his own, just all of his nieces and nephews. As my mom and her siblings were clearing out his condo they needed to find a home for my grandmother, Lily May's, piano. I am the only grandchild named after my grandmother so I was the first grandchild ask if I wanted it. My mom knew I would want it for 2 reasons, I missed playing everyday and although I never met my grandmother, I have a very strong connection to her. Of course I said yes and my mom had it moved to our tiny townhome and it filled the entire family room and I loved it! My husband, Aaron, and I grew our family very slowly due to infertility issues. There were many days I would play the piano and sing to find comfort. As soon as our oldest, Andrew, was old enough to take piano lessons he started and he has not stopped since then. He loves to play. Our middle son, Kaison, loves music but learning to play it was too hard for him due to a cognitive issues as a child. He is 15 years old and just started with a piano teacher who decided to try teaching him by ear and he is catching on so quickly and really excited. Our youngest, Lily, just started piano also. She has a beautiful voice and amazing pitch. She is so excited to sit at the piano and practice and sing. These 3 children are miracles in our lives. Andrew recently married his high school sweetheart, Makayla. They are both in school. Makayla is studying music and computer information systems at BYU. Soccer is her sport of choice. She loves to sing and play the piano. Makayla served her mission in Singapore. Andrew is studying chemistry and Chinese at the University of Utah. Andrew has been swimming competitively since he was 10 and has continued to swim at the U since he returned from his mission in England. Kaison is a freshman. He has always been a very active, athletic kid. He never stops moving or doing things. Kaison plays baseball, is a competitive archer and has his own blacksmithing studio. Kaison loves working on our cars. If you need your oil changed or your brakes done, Kaison will volunteer to do them. He will beg you to let him do them. And then there is Lily, she is 10 and she is the star of the show, she's the youngest and she's the only girl! Lily loves doing everything. She does cheerleading, tumbling, softball and swimming. She loves to sing and music is her everything. She loves her brothers, her friends, her family. She loves deep and wants to put a smile on everyone's face when she meets them. If she can't, she will hug you! We love to do things together. Card games are a weekend must, the more friends and family that join us the better. All 3 kids have grown up at the baseball park. Spring and summer is 5 nights a week at the ball park and all day Saturday too and we love it. We love the long road trips to California to catch a game at Angels Stadium and go to Disneyland and spend a day at the beach. Our family is our everything. We love to play hard together, work hard together, endure trials together and support and love one another. We laugh about how chaotic and crazy our life is but we wouldn't change anything. Our favorite family quote is by Walt Disney and is displayed at the end of the movie Meet the Robinsons, a movie that we love and feel like spoke to our life. At the time it was released, Andrew shared a uncanny resemblance to Lewis, the main character, not only in appearance but also his personality and curiosity. "Around here we don't look backwards for very long. We KEEP MOVING FORWARD, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we are curious.....and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." ---Walt Disney Our family has learned through so many trials and hard times to not look back for long but to KEEP MOVING FORWARD! This is us! Aaron & Charmay Hill & kids! Andrew & Makayla, Kaison and Lily
My Grandmother Lily May's piano, where do I begin. The piano was given to my grandmother by her brother Frank Stebbins. Frank and his wife Reva had the piano but couldn't get it into the house they were moving into, so they brought it to my mom's house and gave it to Lily May. The piano is a player that you have to pump with your feet. Whew.....what a workout. My mom said they had a lot of reels for it but they (her and her 5 siblings) wore them all out because they loved pretending to play the piano while they were pumping the foot pedals. My Aunt Karen wanted to learn to actually play the piano so badly but they did not have the money for lessons or books so she saved her pennies and eventually had enough money to buy herself a book and she taught herself to play the piano. My mom said that the piano was always being played by someone, visiting family, friends, boyfriends, girlfriends. If someone wasn't able to play the piano they would sit down and pump the pedals so the piano would play. When my mom was 8 years, Lily May collapsed and passed away suddenly at home while making dinner with the kids. After Lily May's passing, my Grandpa, Joseph Ford Lucas, met and married my Grandma Idona. She had 2 children and that made a total of 8 kids. Unfortunately , Joseph was in a car accident and passed away from his injuries 2 years after Lily May had passed away. My Grandma Idona was the most amazing woman. She loved and raised all of the kids as if they were her very own. My mom talks about how many things her mothers, Lily May and Idona, had in common and how she knew that Idona was meant to be there to raise them and love them exactly like they would have been by their Mom and Dad. One of the constance things in their life growing up was the piano. It was focal point in the family room of their house and it remained in the same spot in the family room until the day that my Grandma Idona passed away at 76. As grandkids we loved playing the piano at Grandma Idona's house. Mostly we loved crawling under the bench and opening the door and pumping the foot pedals, flipping down the front door and flipping the levers back and forth. As we got older and learned to actually play the piano we would play our songs for Grandma when we would visit her. Eventually the player part of the piano stopped working because the tubes were broken and brittle. When my Grandma Idona passed away and they cleaned out her house, the piano was moved to my Uncle Ivan's condo in Salt Lake. At the time, he was the only one that didn't already have a piano in his home. My uncle didn't play the piano but loved music and as always, when the grand kids would visit him, we would play the piano, even though it had not been tuned in years and mostly sounded like an out of tune bar piano. Uncle Ivan passed away in 2000. As my mom and her siblings were clearing out his condo they needed to find a home for my grandmother, Lily May's, piano. I am the only grandchild named after my grandmother so I was the first grandchild ask if I wanted it. My mom knew I would want it for 2 reasons, I missed playing everyday and although I never met my grandmother in this life, I have a very strong connection to her. Of course I said yes and my mom had it moved to our tiny townhome and it filled the entire family room and I loved it! The piano was showing it's age and neglect so we started to clean it. I spent days working on it. I cleaned it, I polished the wood, I cleaned the keys. I was so excited. All the cleaning and polishing in the world couldn't fix the things inside the piano to make it sound better. I called someone to come and tune it but much to my sadness I was told that it need over $1000 of repairs and it still wouldn't be completely tuned. My husband and I couldn't afford the repairs, we could barely afford the tuning. I tried to play it but it was hard because it was so out of tune and some of the keys were sticking I eventually stopped playing it and then life got busy. When we moved into our current house I decided to contact Brigham Larson to have the piano looked and get a quote for getting some things repaired so it would play better. I had low expectations that I would be able to get it fixed. I don't remember exactly who came to tune the piano from Brigham Larson but they were amazing. They let us know that there were some small repairs that could be done and a few tunings over time and it would be so much better. I was so excited. Our oldest son had started piano lessons and it was so exciting to hear him playing the piano and hear that rich sound that reminded me of my childhood at my grandma's house. As the years have passed along the piano has started to show even more age but my kids continue to play it regularly for fun and for lessons. Our youngest and only daughter, Lily May, is named after my Grandma, just as I was. Just before Lily was born, I knew that she was going to be the closest connection I was going to have to my Grandma Lily May, who I never got to meet. I had this most peaceful feeling and comfort to know that Grandma Lily May and Grandma Idona were having the greatest time with this sweet baby just before she came to our family. Lily loves the stories about Lily May and loves looking through all of the pictures and she has such a fondness for Lily May. Lily just started taking piano lessons and is so excited to be learning on Great-Grandma Lily May's piano. This piano has such deep meaning for my family and for my mom's family. My cousins love seeing it when ever we get together at our house. It makes me sad that I have not been able to restore it to the beautiful instrument that it is meant to be. I have always hoped to be able to restore it and pass it along to my daughter when she gets older and be chosen to have our piano restored would be the most amazing gift. To keep this beautiful family heirloom and pass it on to generations would be the greatest way to honor a family legacy of unconditional love and strength. It is just an honor to be able to share our family and piano story. Thank you.

• YEAR 1900-1910
• MAKE Claxton
• SERIAL NUMBER 114910
• FINISH Cherry
• RENTAL PRICE $NaN
• FINANCE PRICE $NaN
• CATEGORY CONTESTANT