An organ finds a home at OLCC chapel

Sister Mary of Holy Hope, a sister with the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity and members of the SOLT community celebrated the installation of an 1874 Hutchings-Plaisted Opus 42 organ at its permanent home, Our Lady of Corpus Christi Perpetual Adoration Chapel. The celebration included an organ blessing and dedication recital on July 15. 

Sister Holy Hope, who is currently pursuing a master’s degree of Church Music with organ emphasis at the University of Kansas, played “O Lux Beata Trinitas” (by Michael Praetorius); “Ave Maria” (by Johann Sebastian Bach/Charles Gounod) with Brother David Snow on Violin as well as many other favorites.

For Sister Holy Hope the dream of finding an organ for the chapel, which has “perfect acoustics” had begun in 2010 when she was then a novice. After much research, she found out that a new organ, even an electronic organ, was priced at $60,000 on up.

New Organ finds a home

Dr. Roseann Penner Kaufman, an organist in Kansas City, suggested the possibility of rescuing an organ such as the one that her church community had purchased from Troy, New York from a church that was being torn down.  They had acquired a 19^th-century American organ by the famous builder Hook (later Hook and Hastings).  Other advisors from Kansas University's organ department suggested that with OLCC’s brilliant acoustics, a very small organ, with as few as 6 ranks, would be sufficient. Knowing what was needed, all that remained was for the Lord to provide the right organ.

In 2004, St. Anne’s Church was closed in New Bedford, Massachusetts and its property put up for sale. Dr. Ahmet Dirican, who is trained in community-oriented Primary Care/Public Health, internal medicine and geriatrics, purchased the church and rectory in 2007 as his medical practice’s new home. 

His intention was to use the church space to attract community members to join for periodic educational public meetings on preventive medicine topics and have local organists play the organ to entertain the attendants.  Unfortunately, new city fire codes brought on significant procedural barriers which made this unfeasible. Eventually, the City of New Bedford showed interest in purchasing the property to convert it to a “Public Safety Center” with police, fire and EMS departments.

Dr. Dirican spent two years trying to find a new home for the organ, with the intention that he would donate the organ as long as the recipients would pay for its relocation.  He retained ownership of the organ after the sale of the church and he even investigated putting it into storage, but the cost of dismantling and storing the organ was $15,000.

In 2012, an anonymous donor gave a large gift to OLCC for an organ.  Although it was not sufficient to purchase or to move an organ, an organ fund was established and exploration of different organ options began. Unfortunately, a new organ, even an electronic organ, was upwards of $60,000.  Dr. Roseann Penner Kaufman, an organist in Kansas City, suggested the possibility of rescuing an organ such as the one that her church community had purchased from Troy, NY, from a church that was being torn down.  They had acquired a 19^th-century American organ by the famous builder Hook (later Hook and Hastings).  Other advisors from KU’s organ department suggested that with OLCC’s brilliant acoustics, a very small organ, with as few as 6 ranks, would be sufficient.  Knowing what was needed, all that remained was for our Lord to provide the right organ.
 
This organ came to the attention of Mark Pichowicz of Marcus Organs, who specializes in rescuing organs.  Mark contacted Dr. Dirican and offered to help him find a home for the organ.  One of Mark’s emails advertising the organ was sent to Dr. Kevin Vogt, adjunct professor of organ at KU.  He forwarded the email to Sr. Holy Hope, who immediately recognized that this organ had good potential for OLCC, and the process to assess the organ began.  Sister Holy Hope traveled to Massachusetts in March of 2019 to play the organ, and engineers assessed the choir loft to see if it could sustain the weight of a pipe organ.  It was approved by the Board of Governors in late March and fundraising began to raise the remainder of the money needed to move the organ to Texas.
 
In mid-June, Mark dismantled and packed the organ in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and drove the organ to its new home in Corpus Christi, Texas.  The organ arrived on June 22^nd, and the process to install the organ took nine days.  As part of the installation, Mark did a partial rebuild of the organ to restore it to its original configuration.  This was to accommodate the limited space in our choir loft.  Mark was aided by many volunteers, including Heekyung Choi and Robert Barthel from Kansas, who are past and present organ students of KU, OLCC board member Will Merkel, Curtis Speed, Roger Phillips and Sister Holy Hope.  The SOLT community is greatly indebted to Mark Pichowicz who donated a large portion of his labor to this project.
 
About the Organ: 1874 Hutchings-Plaisted Opus 42