Seattle church builds, donates organ to congregation

Tag : electronic organ music
Shortly after 9:30 a.m. on a recent Sunday, organist StevenForster squared up over the two-tiered keyboard of Blessed FrancisXavier Seelos' massive new pipe organ, timed the Rev. Joe Benson'sapproach up the center aisle, and sent the first crashing notes ofBeethoven's "Ode to Joy" spilling into the church below.
Music from 813 fluted pipes filled the space, their resonancebathing the congregation in sound and rumbling against the chestsof deaf parishioners, who with hundreds of hearing people felt orheard the organ for the first time in its new home.
In yet another post-Katrina kindness to New Orleans, the organ wasa gift to the people of Blessed Seelos Parish from strangers aroundSeattle.
Built by hand in a garage-loft by amateur enthusiasts, it wastested there, then disassembled into thousands of pieces, hauled toNew Orleans, spread across the church floor, and reassembled by 15Seattle volunteers in Seelos' loft.
Its value if new: something like $220,000, according to CarlDodrill, the pipe organ enthusiast who led the effort.
Its cost to Seelos: about $20,000, the church's share of preparingits loft to receive the gift, parish officials said.
Like so much other recent private generosity in New Orleans, thestory of the Seelos organ has its roots in Hurricane Katrina.
In early 2006, rebuilding teams from four Seattle area Presbyterianchurches targeted Seelos, home parish to a small, diverse Bywatercongregation of Spanish- and English-speaking Catholics, as well asthe center for deaf worship in the Archdiocese of New Orleans.
The church had weathered the storm relatively well - its disasterhad come in 2003, when it was nearly destroyed in a catastrophicfire - but the parish's pastoral center next door needed months ofstorm repairs, much of it supplied by the Seattle area volunteers.
As it happened, one of the volunteering churches, Mercer IslandPresbyterian Church, counted among its members Dodrill and his wifeof 41 years, Halie.
And the Dodrills, as it happened, form the core of a group ofSeattle area devotees in the Pipe Organ Foundation, a nonprofitgroup devoted to the construction, preservation and promotion ofpipe organs.
Seelos was in the grip of simple math, according to Benson:Recovering from the fire, it did not have the money to replace itspipe organ.
When the Dodrills and friends heard that Seelos still needed anorgan, a gift found a need.
"It's a ministry," said Dodrill, by which he means something moreennobling than restoring old cars.
"It's not for churches, per se. It's for people. The pipe organ isuplifting to the human soul. It buoys up spirits. You can put aspiritual component in it if you want, specifically related toChristianity. But it's good for people. It brings them up; itbrings out the best in them; gives them inspiration; gives themenergy; gives them hope."
Although long interested in pipe organs, Dodrill spent 30productive years as a neuropsychologist teaching at the Universityof Washington Medical School.
As they moved beyond middle age, the Dodrills sought something newto engage them. Their interest in pipe organs flamed anew. She tooklessons. He learned their mechanics, working part time in an organrepair shop.
Interest became passion. With their children gone, the couple movedto a bigger house and in short order Carl Dodrill found a pipeorgan for sale in Toronto. He trucked it to the new house inSeattle and went to work.
The Dodrills' living room now contains an Aeolian Duo-Art pipeorgan - more than 700 pipes arranged in 13 ranks. Pipes along thewalls, pipes along the ceiling, pipes in a space under the floorwith grates cut out to let the swelling music ascend into theliving room.
"Oh yeah, our personal pipe organ is the same size as this one,"said Dodrill, munching an apple during a work break at Seelos.
"These aren't organ fanatics. They're organ maniacs," Bensonconfided later.
Dodrill said Seelos' organ had been put together with parts fromseven or eight old organs, but consists basically of two 1920s eraMollers - one from a Seattle funeral home, and the other from achurch in Moscow, Idaho, that had given it to another church inSpokane.
In time that church tired of it. "They wanted guitars and drums, sothey gave it to us," Dodrill said.
"Except for some of the electronic switching parts there's nothingnewer on this organ than about 75 years, and some is more than 100years old," he said.
For 16 months, Dodrill and his friends assembled a new organ. Theyrewired it by hand, soldering thousands of connections and fittingit with electronic circuitry controlling its mechanical action.
They played it and then broke it down.
Dodrill said his church, Mercer Island Presbyterian, and anotherchurch, Seattle Community Church, paid to haul the three tons oforgan nearly 2,800 miles.
Another church member, Jack VanHartesvelt, an investor in the NewOrleans Loews Hotel, provided free hotel rooms for volunteers whoflew down at their own cost, said the Rev. Dale Sewall, the pastorof Mercer Island.
Strewn across the floor those last days of May, the new pipe organwas a bewildering array of flexible ductwork, wind chests,regulators, swell shades, circuit boards, a massive electric fanmotor, a console - and of course, pipes.
Hundreds of pipes of wood and lead and zinc, named by size andrank: harmonic flutes, oboes, trumpets, celestes, salicionals andbourdons - from an 8-foot-tall wooden box 10 inches square thatbooms a bottom C three octaves below middle C, to a half-inchsqueaker hardly bigger than a thumbnail.
Said Jim Stettner, a Seattle organ builder who spent last weekacoustically fitting the Seelos organ to its space: "This one cando anything from angelic whispers to herald the Second Coming."