In the late 1930s, Professor Wilhelmina Harbert ’33, ’39, ’47 developed a new music therapy major at University of the Pacific. It would be one of the first such programs in the country. 

On April 26 and 27, Pacific celebrated the program’s 85th anniversary with the inaugural Wilhelmina Harbert Music Therapy Legacy Awards. The awards recognize transformative contributions to the Music Therapy program.

“The recipients are inspiring people whose physical and philanthropic support have profoundly impacted our students,” said Eric Waldon ’00, ’07, music therapy professor and program director. 

This year’s honorees are:

• The Ellsworth Family, (Harbert’s grandsons and great granddaughter)
• Clement and Melinda Kong, who established a significant endowment, and
• Sister Abby Newton, who was instrumental in establishing a partnership between Pacific and Stockton’s St. Joseph’s Medical Center.

The Ellsworth Family

Harbert’s interest in music therapy—the use of music in therapeutic settings—developed during World War I. A classically trained pianist, she entertained the troops in France and witnessed firsthand the healing effects of music on injured and shell-shocked soldiers.

After the war, Harbert returned home to New England and later traveled west, where she met her future husband Dr. Ellis Harbert, a well-known surgeon and co-founder of St. Joseph’s Medical Center. The Harberts settled in the Central Valley, where Wilhelmina Harbert and her business partner Adrienne Pfifer established The Oaks Home Music School for local children.

Harbert enrolled at Pacific, earning two bachelor’s and a master’s degree. She began teaching in the Conservatory of Music in 1935, where she was eventually tasked with developing the music therapy major.

Harbert went on to teach at Pacific for more than 20 years and spent decades working with children and patients on campus and in the Stockton community.

After retiring in 1959, Harbert remained active on campus, consulting, lecturing, counseling music majors and filling leadership roles with professional music therapy associations.

She died in 1970. Her book on music therapy, “Opening Doors Through Music,” was published four years later.

“Her attitude was that, even if only one human being could be reached, rehabilitated, saved or find a place in society, then a music therapy student’s efforts were worthwhile,” said Harbert’s grandson Brian Ellsworth.

Earlier this year Ellsworth, his brother Bill and daughter Melissa, gifted Pacific a large collection of Harbert’s personal files, including original book manuscripts, observations from her work with children and a scrapbook of her travels through Europe. The collection will be housed in the university’s Holt-Atherton Special Collection and Archives.

“Wilhelmina’s legacy, in my opinion, is that Pacific earned a place in the world where healing and helping, science and inquiry, grew from one person's recognition that music is not just for pleasure or performance, but is an avenue to minds hidden or scarred,” Bill Ellsworth said.

Clement and Melinda Kong

Lara Kong ’19 wanted to use music to help people, and she wanted to attend college close to home. Pacific allowed her to do both, while also preparing her to venture further.

Today, Kong is a music therapist at A Mission for Michael, a residential treatment facility in Irvine, California. She works with clients battling addiction and mental and behavioral health disorders.

“I was really well prepared for where I’m at in my career,” she said. “I’m taking the skills I learned at Pacific and implementing them every day.”

Kong’s parents, Clement and Melinda Kong, are deeply grateful to the program that nurtured their daughter. In 2015, they made a generous gift to establish the Kong Family Endowment for Music Therapy, providing programmatic support for students in perpetuity.

The Kong Family Endowment has helped more than 100 students since 2020 with various training costs and covered their memberships in the American Music Therapy Association. It has also provided emergency support for students facing financial hardships.

Since their daughter graduated, the Kongs have continued to support the Conservatory of Music. Lara Kong acknowledges their humble, quiet generosity.

“My parents like to stay behind the curtain, but they contribute because they see how I’ve excelled, and they know my ability to excel came from my education at Pacific,” Kong said. 

Sister Abby Newton

Sister Newton has served St. Joseph’s Medical Center as vice president for mission integration since 2003. She is also responsible for the Central California Service Area of Dignity Health.

In 2018 Newton met Casie Little, who oversees Pacific’s music therapy practicum opportunities.

Newton and Little collaborated for nearly two years to plan a music therapy training program at St. Joseph’s Medical Center and St. Joseph’s Behavioral Health Center. The two pursued fundraising resources, collaborated with the hospital foundation and built connections between the hospital and the university.

Little describes Newton as a champion for music therapy in the hospital setting.

“Those kinds of therapies that don’t poke, don’t touch, that speak to the spirit and not to anything clinical, can be powerful healers in themselves.” Newton said. “It’s phenomenal to me what we can do in medicine these days.”

Today, Professor Little provides therapy services at the hospital five days a week, accompanied by a graduate fellow three days a week.

To learn how to support music therapy at Pacific, contact Yvette Khan at 209.932.2978 or ykhan@pacific.edu.