Local Generosity Is Music to Their Ears
August 24, 2011
Last week, we shared a story about a Cumberland County artist who donates art supplies to local schools, remembering that supplies were hard to come by when she was a child.
Today we bring you Hillsborough pawn shop owner Bob Moulton, a musician since his middle school days, who is donating instruments to Wake, Orange and Durham County school districts.
"Pawn shop owner gives musical instruments to schools" (The News & Observer)
HILLSBOROUGH -- The cornet he bought at a yard sale for $15 barely worked, but it was a gateway.
When Bob Moulton's parents couldn't afford to rent an instrument so he could join the Neal Middle School band in Durham in the 1970s, they found a less expensive one. Through the years he added instruments to his repertoire - the guitar, bass, French horn and baritone horn.
"More people doing random acts of kindness for strangers...that's the reason I'm doing it."
Now Moulton is the owner of his own chain of pawn shops and is donating used instruments to three Triangle school districts so other students will have the same music opportunities he did.
Moulton is donating about 100 used band instruments and $2,000 to offset any repairs that might be needed on those instruments to theOrange County School District, the Durham Public School District and the Wake County School District.
"I was of modest means ... and I grew up and made something of myself, and I'm giving back," said Moulton, 50, who owns the National Pawn chain of pawn shops in the Triangle. "I just think that's how the system should work; more people doing random acts of kindness for strangers. ... That's the reason I'm doing it."
The instruments and money for Durham and Orange schools will be recognized in a ceremony today at Chewning Middle School in Durham and at Stanback Middle School in Hillsborough...
Great story!