Recently, my girlfriend Linda sent me a video featuring Korean girl playing exquisitely beautiful music. Hee Ah Lee, who was born with pincer-like fingers - only 2 on each hand, is a living testimony of how with grit and determination, one can overcome barriers and make dreams come true.
I did a bit of online research and have come across a few websites that have verified that this tale and the video are authentic. For further verification, please click HERE.
When you watch the video clip, you will be amazed by this story of a mother and a daughter who have overcome odds from the very beginning.
Lee’s father is a disabled man who was injured during a military operation. Paralyzed from the waist, he took morphine for ten years. Lee's mom met him because she was his nurse.When they got married, they never planned for a baby. The pregnancy was a surprise. Doctors told her that because of a medication she had been taking, her child would not be normal.
Hee Ah's mom decided to go ahead with the pregnancy and in 1985 in Seoul, South Korea, little Hee Ah Lee was born with only two fingers on each hand, disfigurement of her legs, and slight brain injury. The hospital told Sun that she could not care for the child at home and relatives wanted her to place the child for adoption in a foreign country. Hee Ah's mom thought her baby was beautiful, however, and was determined that she would live a successful life.
By the time Hee Ah was a pre-schooler her mother decided that she wanted her daughter to take piano lessons and for two reasons. One was that she felt it would help her strengthen her hands so she could hold a pencil. The other was that she felt that if she could master the piano, she could master anything.
For six months piano schools turned them down then the one teacher who did accept the task got discouraged and wanted to quit. It became a three-month contest of wills between mother and daughter that led to a confrontation in which Sun actually threw her daughter on the floor in frustration. She said Lee got back up on the piano bench and for the first time played the children’s song she had been trying to learn. That was the turning point and one year later Lee won the grand prize in a piano concert for Kindergartners. It was at age 7 that Lee won Korea’s 19th National Handicap Conquest Contest and was presented with her award by the President of Korea.
Today Lee is 22, has won numerous awards. She is a widely traveled concert pianist with more than 200 appearances. Her first album titled “Hee-ah, a Pianist with Four Fingers” will be released in June.
Lee gives tribute to her mother for challenging her to master the piano and said that although her training was difficult, "as time went by, the piano became my source of inspiration and my best friend."
Dear readers, please click on the video and marvel at the inspiring video of Hee Ah Lee - the fantastic four-fingered pianist.
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