29 Facts About Lois Towles

Lois Towles was an American classical pianist, music educator, and community activist.

In 1942, Towles enrolled in the University of Iowa and earned two master's degrees in 1943.

Lois Towles went on to further her education at Juilliard, the University of California, Berkeley, the Conservatoire de Paris, and the American Conservatory at Fountainebleau.

From 1943 to 1952, Lois Towles was an assistant professor of music at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Lois Towles had a distinguished performance career from her debut in 1947 until her retirement in 1966.

Lois Towles was a member of Tuskegee's sixth cadet graduating class and one of the first 50 African American combat fighter pilots in history.

Lois Towles was notable for being the Arkansas's second-ever African American combat fighter pilot.

Lois Towles is notable for saving decorated Tuskegee Airman Roscoe Brown from a potentially fatal aircraft crash.

Lois Bernard Towles was born on April 4,1912, in Texarkana Miller County, Arkansas, to Thomas Elsworth Towles of Alabama and Arabella Clark of Arkansas.

Lois Towles was the fifth of nine siblings, including: Thomas Jr.

From a young age, Lois Towles was interested in music and pretended that a window sill in their home was a piano, until her parents could afford to purchase a piano for her to play.

Lois Towles began performing at her local church around the age of nine and the following year became the pianist for the church choir.

Lois Towles graduated as valedictorian of her high school class and entered Wiley College in Marshall.

Lois Towles was hired to teach music at the black high school in 1936 and 1937.

Lois Towles was promoted in 1938, and served as the music director for the Gregg County, Texas Negro schools until 1941.

Lois Towles left Texas at the end of the school year in 1941 and moved to Iowa, where she earned her Master of Arts degree in seven and a half months and then earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in nine months at the University of Iowa.

Lois Towles completed her studies in 1943 with a thesis The History of Music Education at Wiley College, becoming only the second person to have obtained a Master of Fine Arts degree at the university and the first African-American to have done so.

In October 1943, Lois Towles was hired as an assistant professor in the music department of Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Lois Towles enrolled in Juilliard to pursue her doctorate, studying under Sascha Gorodnitzki, and was appointed as "artist in residence" at Tennessee State University.

Lois Towles debuted at Tennessee State on October 22,1947, and the review of Ruth Campbell of The Tennessean compared her performance to that of Arthur Rubinstein, a well-known pianist with an international reputation.

Lois Towles spent the summer of 1948 studying with him and took courses at the University of California, Berkeley, while touring to capacity crowds in major cities throughout the South.

Lois Towles studied at the American Conservatory at Fountainebleau with Nadia Boulanger and Robert Casadesus.

Besides practicing six to eight hours per day, Lois Towles performed, earning praise for recitals at the American Embassy of Paris, the Opera-Comique, the Gaveau Salon, and for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Lois Towles appeared in Ebony and Jet, was featured in various fashion magazines, and was a model for the artist, Paul Colin.

Lois Towles designed her own clothes, becoming known for trimming her concert gowns with favorite bars from scores of music.

In early 1950, Lois Towles played in her New York debut at The Town Hall and toured for thirty days throughout the United States.

Lois Towles resigned from Fisk in 1952, and throughout the early 1950s, traveled back and forth between Paris and the United States performing music and developing a fashion show and music platform performance with her sister Dorothea.

Lois Towles had established a successful dental practice in San Francisco and soon after meeting again, they married on June 6,1956.

Lois Towles served two terms as the president of the local chapter of the World Adoption International Fund, a children's service organization created by Jane Russell, and was elected president in 1977 of the Women's Auxiliary of the San Francisco Dental Society.