Condi: The Condoleezza Rice Story by Antonia Felix Read Free Book Online Page B

productive, enriching experiences; to pour as much knowledge and culture into her young, impressive mind as possible. This dedication was based on love as much as on their longstanding family standards of achievement.
    A specific incident sheds light on the depth of Angelena’s devotion. Mrs. Downing dropped in one day while Angelena was ironing the tiny lace edges of Condi’s anklet socks. “What in the world are you doing?” she asked. “I just love her so much,” replied Angelena. Mrs. Downing then remarked that with so much love, she should have another child. “I can’t take this love from Condi,” she said. John Rice held an equal amount of reverence for his daughter and felt an equal obligation to give her every opportunity. One member of John’s congregation recalled him saying, “Condi doesn’t belong to us. She belongs to God.”
    By the time she began elementary school, Condi was already a serious music student and more ready to get down to business than most of her classmates. One day, while the other students were noisily blowing on their plastic flutophones and generally raising a ruckus, Condi raised her voice above the din and said to her teacher, “I’m waiting for my instructions. And would you please write the music down for me?” She was accustomed to paying attention, behaving well, and keeping an orderly routine. She acted mature because that was the way she was treated at home. “John and Angelena were the perfect parents,” said Moses Brewer, a friend of Condi’s from the University of Denver. “They never talked to her like she was a child, which is why she was mature beyond her years.” Some of her schoolmates took this maturity and perfectionism, as well as her dainty manners and habit of walking nearly on her tiptoes, as a sign of being prissy. But Condi got bored in situations where time was being wasted. And after seven years of piano, she got bored with that, too.
    “I remember when I was about ten I really wanted to quit playing the piano,” she said. “I had been a child prodigy, now I was ten, there were lots of kids who could play the piano at ten.” For Condi, the uniqueness of being “the cute little piano prodigy” was over and she was ready to move on to something else. “[But] my mother said you’re not old enough or good enough to make that decision, and she was right.”
    Instead, she enrolled in a local conservatory and took her playing to a new level. At age ten, she entered the Birmingham Southern Conservatory of Music, which had recently opened its doors to black students. “I think I was the first black student to go to that newly integrated conservatory,” she said, “and I began to compete in piano at that point.” The conservatory also introduced her to the basics of flute and violin, which rounded out her private study of ballet and French. And in her spare time, Condi tackled a carefully selected pile of books—always the best literature for her age group. One of the down-sides of her attentive mother’s efforts was that books were always an assignment, never a relaxing way to escape. “I grew up in a family in which my parents put me into every book club,” she said. “So I never developed the fine art of recreational reading.”
    Another way Angelena sought to expand Condi’s horizons was to enroll her in different public schools, exposing her to a variety of social and educational experiences. At every school—as well as in all of her extracurricular activities—she was told to go beyond what was expected of her, always hand in work that was above average, always rise to the top. This was the unwritten yet firm law of Titusville families: to raise children who were “twice as good” as white kids to gain an equal footing and “three times as good” to surpass them. This was the driving force behind the high, uncompromising standards that the Rays and the Rices expected of their children. By encouraging them to always be far above