Genius autistic 12-year-old Ghanaian boy offered scholarship to study music at Michigan State University
Update: The story you are about to read was first written and published in January 2023 on GhanaWeb, but the latest update is that Jude has been offered a scholarship to read jazz and classical music at the Michigan State University. He shared this information on his Facebook page with the message, “Michigan State University gave me a scholarship to study jazz and classical music at Michigan State University College of Music under their great professors and will never ever forget this experience.”
Jude Kofie, a 12-year-old son of Ghanaian parents living in Aurora, Colorado, was with the family one day when his father started hearing an unusually good sound coming from their basement.
Of course, there was an old keyboard in there, but Isaiah Kofie, the father, was certain nobody at home knew how to play it.
But he got the shock of his life when, on walking in on his son, he saw him beautifully and masterfully displaying his musical prowess on the keyboard.
To be sure his son was the one doing this magic on the keyboard when he had never learnt how to play, he got him a bigger one to see what else he could do.
“And boy, could he do,” a CBS video report said.
This all happened about a year and a half ago, the report added.
And when CBS went to interview him, and then asked him what he thought about his sudden knowledge of music, Jude replied, “It’s a miracle.”
“You think it’s a miracle?” CBS News asked him.
“That’s what I prefer,” he responded.
But his father was yet to get a far bigger shock of his life when one day, out of nowhere, and without any prompting, a huge piano was delivered to their house.
For Jude, it was ‘music to his eyes’ but his father, Isaiah, could only react in shock at the knowledge that it was “all for free.”
“Who does that?” he said to the CBS reporter.
But they found their secret ‘surpriser’ soon enough, in the person of Bill Magnusson, a piano tutor.
Explaining why, Bill said he saw a local news story about Jude and then he heard him play.
Having also learned that Jude’s parents has immigrated from Ghana and were raising four children, while still sending money back home to their family in Ghana, he felt a great compassion to help them.
“What resources are left over to help this special little soul?” he asked.
And so Bill did the unimaginable: he used his father’s inheritance of $15,000 to purchase a piano for Jude.
“We’re family now,” he added.
Isaiah Kofie is still living in shock, but even more, he understands how much it is to be grateful too.
“Somebody to just love your son like that by making sure that his future is secured, we are super thankful,” he said.
Source: www.ghanaweb.com
