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Lynn White Kebetz, 56, professional viola player
By Walter F. Naedele
Inquirer Staff Writer
Nov 21, 2008
Practice, practice, practice. It took Lynn Kebetz more than 40 years to get to play her viola at a Manhattan concert.
When she did, she was part of the backup group on the final stop of a 2004 East Coast tour by none less than Linda Ronstadt.
The touring musicians "ended up playing [their] last concert at the Beacon Theatre" on upper Broadway, said Mrs. Kebetz's husband, Igor.
"It was the pinnacle of her career," he added.
On Sunday, Lynn White Kebetz, 56, of Levittown, an account supervisor at the Philadelphia Gas Works, died of gastric cancer at Temple University Hospital.
Mrs. Kebetz had retired this year after 30 years with PGW.
Born in Philadelphia, she graduated from Germantown High School and attended the Settlement Music School in Philadelphia. She earned a music scholarship to West Virginia University, her husband said, but dropped out and then earned a bachelor's in English at La Salle College.
The viola "was a lifelong passion since grade school," her husband said, but "she came into her prime in the last 15, 20 years."
On the Ronstadt tour, Mrs. Kebetz was among musicians mostly from the Princeton area who played half a dozen concerts in the Northeast.
"She would have done this free," her husband said.
With the Moody Blues on a later tour, her husband said, she and the Princeton musicians helped open a casino near Niagara Falls.
Mrs. Kebetz had not played with such celebrities before or since, her husband said.
A member of Local 62 of the American Federation of Musicians, Mrs. Kebetz played the viola over the years with the Old York Road Symphony, the Delaware Valley Philharmonic, the Greater Trenton Symphony Orchestra, and the Orchestra Society of Philadelphia. "On her resume," her husband said, "I found there might have been another six or seven."
She also was a member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
Besides her husband, Mrs. Kebetz is survived by a daughter, Jennifer Sauder; her mother, Marilyn White; a brother, Craig White; and her first husband, Bruce Pfetzing.
Friends may call after 10 a.m. today at Queen of the Universe Church, 2443 Trenton Rd., Levittown, where a Funeral Mass will be said at 11. Burial will be in Resurrection Cemetery, Bensalem.
Contact staff writer Walter F. Naedele at 215-854-5607 or wnaedele@phillynews.com .
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