Rildia Bee O'Bryan Cliburn and Irl Allison receive MTNA Achievement Award.

Rildia Bee O'Bryan Cliburn and Irl Allison were honored posthumously with the MTNA Achievement Award at the Opening Session of the 2006 MTNA National Conference in Austin, Texas.

Cliburn (1896-1994), a piano teacher and mother of pianist Van Cliburn, was born October 14, 1896, in McGregor, Texas, to William Carey and Sirrildia (McClain) O'Bryan. After early piano lessons from her mother and local teacher Prebble Drake, and after graduating from high school in Richmond, Texas, Rildia studied at the Cincinnati Conservatory and later in New York. She studied under Arthur Friedheim, a pupil of Franz Liszt. In 1923, Rildia married Harvey Lavan Cliburn, a native of Mississippi and a railroad employee. She passed the grand 19th-century virtuoso tradition on to her son, who revived and personified that tradition for audiences in the second half of the 20th century.

Allison (1896-1979), a music educator, had long desired to launch a competition that would help music students raise the quality of their work. He began by founding the National Guild of Piano Teachers, which used a system of auditions to help teachers and their students assess their progress and proficiency. Allison dreamed of a prize-winning competition and, from time to time, spoke of establishing one. Then, at a dinner honoring Van Cliburn, without any warning, Allison announced the Guild would sponsor an international quadrennial competition with an unprecendented prize of $10,000. He said it would be named after Van Cliburn, the winner of the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.

The organizer of that dinner, Grace Ward Lankford, began working with Allison immediately, since the Fort Worth Piano Teachers Forum had plans to launch a competition as well. The two plans merged, and Lankford rolled up her sleeves to recruit community support. By sheer determination, cajolery and pluck, she enlisted the support of the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce and Texas Christian University. Piano teachers shared their enthusiasm as volunteer workers in a vacant room at the Boswell Dairy. Soon townsfolk, music lovers and civic leaders all donated time, stuffing envelopes, licking stamps and carting bundles of mail to the post office. These volunteers laid the foundation of what has become a world-renowned competition.