A desire to share the musical talent with which she was blessed led Pensal Winston McCray to become a piano teacher. An unsettling personal experience led her to a second calling that has enriched young lives in another important way.
At a luncheon given by the Alphonse Robinson African-American Music Association, McCray received the Charles Burrell Award not only for her 20 years of service as a piano teacher but for having founded the Ethnic College Counseling Program. It’s a project she started in 1983 with the Rocky Mountain United Methodist Conference to help teens from ethnic minorities continue their education beyond high school.
She started the program about the same time that her eldest, an honor student at a Denver High School, was told no college scholarships were available despite her 4.3 grade-point average. Determined that her daughter would receive the financial assistance she deserved, McCray set out on her own to find scholarships her daughter could apply for.
McCray also realized that others could benefit from her research, and with the help of her church she launched the college-counseling program. It works with students in grades seven and higher who are willing to attend required workshops on test-taking, study skills, entrance-exam preparation, critical thinking, career planning and college selection.
“Some of our students may take five to six years to graduate from college,” McCray says. “But if it had not been for the assistance they received from the Ethnic College Counseling Center, the students would not have completed college at all.”
In addition, McCray conducts biennial tours that enable African-American students to visit historically black colleges and universities. She estimates that she has helped 1,200 local students attend college with scholarship aid.
Bennie Williams, president of the Alphonse Robinson African American Music Association, told the luncheon attendees that McCray’s other community work includes membership in the NAACP, where she is education chair for the Denver chapter; Denver Sister Cities International; and the United Methodist Church.
She’s a member and past president of the International Toastmistress Club Council V; a member of the National Piano Guild of Musicians and has received awards from the Urban League, NAACP, United Methodist Church, Hampton University Alumni Association, Bennett College, American Association of University Women, and J.C. Penney Golden Rule foundation.
McCray, Williams added, was the oldest hearing child in a family of five children (a brother is deaf) and was raised in Chicago. She started piano lessons when she was 5, and later directed a church choir and played organ and piano at her family’s church.
McCray earned a bachelor’s degree in music and psychology from Bennett College in Greensboro, N.C., then went on to receive masters’ degrees in psychological counseling and guidance and in human communications, both from the University of Northern Colorado. She also has postgraduate certificates in education and special education from Ohio State University and Metropolitan State College.
She is married to physician Christopher McCray, and their five children are Talia, a professor of transportation and statistics at the University of Rhode Island; Monique, a former Navy surgeon completing an emergency-room residency at Beth Israel Hospital in New Jersey; Christophe, a scientist in laser physics who has worked for NASA and built medical lasers for a company called DRS; Rispba, a third-year medical student at the University of Texas Medical School in Galveston; and Demetrus, who has attended Concordia College and Philander Smith College.
Proceeds from the luncheon in McCray’s honor benefit the Marian Morrison Robinson Scholarship Fund of the Alphonse Robinson African American Music Association, a branch of the National Association of Negro Musicians. It is the oldest organization dedicated to the preservation of all genres of African-American music and was founded in Chicago in 1919.
Circle the date
Attorney Sheila Gutterman, Realtor Julie Gelfond and Linda Appel Lipsius of the Orange Glo International family are to be honored Tuesday at a lunch hosted by Colorado section of the National Council of Jewish Women. Mitzi Townshend, 303-221-2229, has ticket information.
Society editor Joanne Davidson can be reached at 303-820-1314 or jmdpost@aol.com.
