How did I come to the Organ? Nearly 60 years ago I sat in McFarland Lutheran Church at five years old and stared directly forward at a man named Kary Hyre playing an instrument with asymmetric pipes and every week I puzzled over the asymmetry. A few years later in junior choir I was seated to his side and was fascinated with him playing notes with his feet that were hidden from the congregation behind a modesty curtain. A few more years after that my mother acquired an electro-mechanical organ of a unique design having a single belt spinning 12 discs. Most importantly it had a two-octave pedal which was a requirement in her mind. It was too heavy for us to move. Eventually that organ console was sent to my dad in Hawaii who was in a club of people building pipe organs in their dwellings from pipes of decommissioned church and theater organs. He was building an organ including pipes, relays, and pressure boxes in his one-bedroom condo. I learned what a diode was and how to solder one from him as there is one for each key and pipe. That was the summer before engineering school for me. When he retired my dad brought the organ with him to Oregon. And decades later when he’d had a stroke and could only play with one hand I remember him declaring that tomorrow he would play with both hands and we silently nodded our heads.
When I got out of college and moved to Illinois I inherited a pump organ as my mother who thought no one should live without a keyboard even in an apartment. My idea of a keyboard is my present 7′ Mason & Hamlin grand piano but the little pump organ represented a piece of organ history, like a one-room school house. It was endearing.
I didn’t really become a beginning organist until 25 years ago when I joined Light Of Christ Lutheran Church in Algonquin. Ask for access and the next thing you know you are playing a service. I am and always will be a beginner practicing and playing beginner pieces on electronic organs. Rare is the pipe organ on which I have played. But, every experience helps me better understand the skills that others have developed.
At her funeral my mother was quoted as having said that to her God’s name was spelled “B-A-C-H”. So, if and when I get to the good place, I’ll know how to find her. I’ll just listen for the organ music.