Dec. 27--When Mary Jane Fitzpatrick's home caught fire years ago, her prized Steinway piano was so badly damaged that the insurance company offered to pay for a new one.
But Fitzpatrick, a piano teacher who was then a music instructor at Virginia Commonwealth University, was so attached to the piano that she wanted to have it repaired instead.
"Her reason was, 'My father gave me that piano, and I'm going to keep it,'" recalled Dave Campbell, a piano tuner who repaired Fitzpatrick's piano after the fire in the 1990s.
Campbell and others on Wednesday feared that it was Fitzpatrick who perished early Wednesday morning in a second blaze at her house on West 49th Street in South Richmond.
"She was very dedicated to her students," said Linda Johnston administrative director of VCU's Department of Music. "She taught with a great concern with her students. I think she was very compassionate with her teaching."
Fire officials said Wednesday they had found human remains inside the two-story Cape Cod house, but they did not identify the victim and did not release an age or gender.
Two people who know Fitzpatrick said they believe she is in her early 70s. She graduated in 1961 from what is now the University of Mary Washington.
Neighbors told fire officials that Fitzpatrick lived in the home alone, and several people who have known her over the years said she had never married, was not known to have any relatives in the area, and lived a solitary life.
Richmond fire Lt. Robbie Hagaman said the blaze in the 900 block of West 49th Street, near Pine Crest Avenue, was reported about 2 a.m. and that firefighters from a nearby station quickly arrived. They found heavy flames rising from the rear and roof of the building.
The blaze gutted the house and caused the second floor to partially collapse on the first. The powerful flames initially kept firefighters back as they battled the blaze, Hagaman said.
At first, the firefighters did not find anyone inside the home, but the remains were discovered a little after 5 a.m. on the first floor. Hagaman said the cause of the fire had not been determined but that investigators do not suspect foul play.
Campbell and others said that the first fire at Fitzpatrick's home occurred in the '90s, but Hagaman could not confirm Wednesday evening the date of the earlier blaze or give any other details.
Tonya Cory, one of Fitzpatrick's neighbors and one of her former piano students, walked with her husband to Fitzpatrick's house in pouring rain after they heard the sad news.
Fitzpatrick, known to some as "Fitzy," taught Cory piano at VCU in the '90s, when Cory was a voice major.
Cory described Fitzpatrick as spunky, recalling that she once told Cory that she was "a very good piano player for having such bad fingering."
"I worked on my fingering because of her -- I pride myself on that now," said Cory, who now teaches piano and voice lessons.
Two of Fitzpatrick's former colleagues from VCU's Department of Music said she taught part-time at VCU from the 1970s until she left roughly 10 years ago. Detailed information on her time at VCU could not be obtained Wednesday because offices at the school were closed.
Sonia Vlahcevic a professor of music at VCU, used to perform with Fitzpatrick on piano in the Richmond area in the '60s and '70s. Vlahcevic said that Fitzpatrick had earned doctoral degrees in piano and musicology.
"She was a wonderful pianist and a very fine teacher," Vlahcevic said.
Johnston, the administrative director of VCU's music department, said that as far as she knows Fitzpatrick did not maintain contact with other faculty after she left the school.
Campbell, who has known Fitzpatrick for about 20 years and used to tune her piano, said, "I never knew her to be with other people except on the job."
"She was a very unique person," he added. "She was the kind of person that would finish the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle before dinner."
He said that Fitzpatrick was a person who did not put on airs, and someone with whom he shares a special bond, one piano lover to another.
"There are hundreds and hundreds of piano students that she taught over the years," Campbell said. "That was her passion, and her singular employment."
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Copyright 2012 - Richmond Times-Dispatch, Va.
