Judy Postell Cone is petite, soft-spoken and moves fluidly around the pianos and organs at the Fox Music Store in North Charleston. Although she retired from the public school system in 1996, her schedule is packed with private lessons and senior adult group lessons at the store. She is also the organist and choral director serving with her husband, Frank, pastor, at Rutledge Baptist Church in Charleston.

“Music is who I am, and I know God had a plan for me from the very beginning,” said Cone. She shares that she was adopted as a baby and was her adoptive parents only child. “I didn’t know who my real parents were until I was about 40 years old,” she said. “Looking back now and knowing what little bit I knew about them, I would have probably never been able to take music lessons; it would have never happened.”

As it was, Cone began piano lessons at age five. “I had always loved music and loved to sing,” she said. “I loved dancing around to the music on my little record player.” Her parents were very supportive and created opportunities for her to progress musically.

After years of training as a child, she auditioned with Vernon Weston, a well-respected teacher, who accepted her as an organ student when she was in junior high. After taking lessons for only six months, Weston called and said he had a request for an organist at a small Methodist church. “He recommended me because He thought I could do it, and I believed him,” said Cone, seemingly still amazed by that today. “So I became a church organist and choral director at age 14. That was my first experience, and I have been a church organist ever since.”

Cone received an organ scholarship to Columbia College in the mid-1960s. After attending there two years, her mother became ill, and she returned to Charleston to care for her. Shortly after coming home, she received a phone call from David Cuttino, assistant music professor at BCC, who offered her an organ scholarship at a brand new school. “That was a God thing for me because my mom ended up being an invalid for 16 years, and I would never have finished my music degree if it had not been for the phone call that day,” said Cone. To this day, she does not know how Cuttino learned about her and her situation.

In 1966 she started as a transfer student at Baptist College. “The music department was in a trailer in the back of campus where we had to wade through mud to get to class,” Cone remembers. But in the midst of the unsavory conditions, she felt very at home on campus and was nurtured by professors like Oliver Yost. “Mr. Yost, my piano professor, did so much for my playing. I had great technique, but I didn’t have a whole lot of feeling,” said Cone.

“I remember him saying, ‘Judy, you have got to love this music as you play, love it.’ I had to think about that because no one had ever said that to me before. He was a wonderful professor who shaped a lot of the way I play today.” One of the musical highlights of her college career was being invited to play the organ accompanying two choirs and the Charleston Symphony in a presentation of Handel’s Messiah. “That was a really special time for me,” she recalls.

Although Cone was a commuter student, she loved hanging out in the dorm with friends. One of her closest friends was Linda Harrison, an elementary education major who taught her how to play bridge, which Cone says, at that time, was almost as evil as dancing.

In 1968, she graduated from Baptist College earning the first music education degree. Over the years, she has done graduate studies in education at The Citadel, organ at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and choral music and musical theater at USC, Columbia.

The Cones have two children who are following their own dreams. Stephen is a film maker in Chicago. His first film premiered last fall. Daughter Christina is a singer/songwriter living in New York City. Husband Frank graduated from BCC in 1977.

Cone has taught in nine schools ranging from middle school to college level, has an impressive list of church ministry experiences, and has taught countless private organ, piano and voice lessons for more than 30 years.

There is no way to know how many lives Judy Cone has touched over the years. She has freely and consistently shared her God-given talent and has followed the beat of His heart regardless of her circumstances. “God orchestrated things in my life when I was a baby and helpless. As life went on, He continued to orchestrate things in my life when I didn’t realize how helpless I was.”