She Sings Her Song, and the Body Anatomic
In her youth, the future professor of anatomy wanted to become a singer. In the 1960s, she sang in church choirs and at 4-H fairs, taught herself to play acoustic guitar, and emulated Kris Kristofferson, Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton, and Tanya Tucker.
Then and Now: Dr. Sherry Downie in the late 1970s, singing in Central Park when performing was her main gig, and in 2017, at the first Musicians of Einstein jam, held in the Lubin Dining Hall.
In the Spotlight
Fast forward to 1973: Proving she had the chops to go pro, Sherry Downie landed a six-month gig singing mainly Kris Kristofferson songs at a Ft. Meyers, FL, bar, where she called herself ‘Sherry Ellis.’ “My family name was too long and hard to spell,” she explained.
Photo in a Norwegian pop magazine during the production of the movie “50-50.” Then known as Sherry Ellis, Dr. Downie appears with the movie’s star Steinar Raaen. Though she sang in the movie, no stills were taken in the recording studio.By the following year, she had signed with an agent, and was singing and playing her guitar full-time in St. Petersburg. “When you accompany yourself on your guitar, your best friend is on stage with you,” she said of her beloved instrument. “Playing keeps you too busy to get nervous.”
Her next move, in 1975, was to New York City, where she was soon scoring regular gigs in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Her career really took off in 1980, when country music soared in popularity thanks to the John Travolta/Debra Winger movie, Urban Cowboy. “There were country music bars on just about every corner, and we played six to seven nights a week all the time!” Dr. Downie recalled.
For the next dozen years, she performed soft rock, country and folk covers at such venerable New York venues as the Red Blazer and Brandy’s on the Upper East Side, O’Lunney’s Irish Pub in midtown and the Back Fence in Greenwich Village. She even opened for Tanya Tucker at a 1983 concert in Suffern, NY. She then spent the better part of a year in Europe playing both small and large venues and recording two songs for a Norwegian film, “Fifty, Fifty.”
A Career-Changing Event
In June 1983, life as Downie knew it was upended when a rotted, wooden railing gave way and she fell from a second-floor balcony in the house she was renting. “I landed flat on my face, knocking out teeth and breaking my nose. I also shattered my kneecap,” she recalled.
She spent the next six months enduring a blur of surgeries and was out of work for the first time in years. “I’d been self-employed for many years, and I didn’t have workers’ compensation insurance. I was so frustrated I decided to go back to school and get a degree so I could get a job with a clear future and benefits. And when I took my comparative anatomy course, I knew I’d found my calling.”
Today, you’re more likely to find Dr. Downie in the anatomy lab where she teaches the first-year course.By 2000, she had completed a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree and a Ph.D., and was an associate professor of anatomy at Mercy College. She was also working as a part-time instructor at Einstein in the first-year anatomy course. In 2004, then director of the course, Dr. Todd Olson, offered her a full-time position in the anatomy department at Einstein.
Fast forward to 2015: Following Dr. Olson’s retirement, Dr. Downie took the reins leading the anatomy course. “It’s been my greatest honor and most wonderful challenge to work with the students and faculty at Einstein,” she said. “I couldn’t ask for a better life.”
A Once and Future Musician
Dr. Downie has no regrets about leaving showbiz behind. “I had a great time, but you can’t grow old gracefully lugging around a couple hundred pounds of sound equipment.”
These days, her regular bookings are the lectures she gives to what she calls “a wonderful audience” — her anatomy students at Einstein. “My love of both performing and teaching come from my desire to communicate and connect,” she said.
Last year, Musicians of Einstein, a student organization, put together a concert and invited Dr. Downie to participate. “It felt good!” she said of performing again. “Like going back to your childhood ‘home.’ It’s the feeling I get every time I pick up my guitar.”
Posted on: Thursday, July 12, 2018