Maria "Madi" Helena Bacon (1906 - 2001) was an American musician, choral conductor, educator and athlete.
She graduated from high school in 1922 and obtained an undergraduate degree in romance languages from The University of Chicago.
From 1922 to 1923, perhaps through the close connection of her parents to Jane Addams,[4] she worked at Chicago's Hull House, teaching art.
In February of 1928, she was hired as a tennis teacher at the Katherine Branson School in Marin County, California.
The first rehearsal as a mixed chorus was held on March 3, 1936, under the direction of Madi Bacon, who received an annual salary of $250.
She also attended Tanglewood in the Massachusetts Berkshires, to study conducting under Serge Koussevitzky and Stanley Chapple, alongside Leonard Bernstein and others.
In 1941, Bacon received an MA from University of Chicago, studying under Carl Bricken.
Its president was Edward "Jim" Sparling, who fought with an increasingly "illiberal and discriminatory" board.
[9][10] An avid swimmer, and swimming teacher and also a "Red Cross life-saver:, one November day in 1933 she tried to save a man from drowning.
A number of people gathered to watch but Bacon was the only person to strip down removing her "excess clothing."