NORWAY – For the past decade, the Unitarian-Universalist Church has been trying to raise $18,000 – practically penny by penny – to restore its 68-year-old organ, according to church members.
So far, the church has raised about $10,000, according to Nancy Wood, chairwoman of the church’s restoration committee. Much of this money has come from church members dropping bottles off at redemption centers and donating their proceeds, she said.
The organ, an Aeolian Skinner, forms the backdrop of the pulpit, and looks something like a wedding cake, with great big golden pipes rising through the middle of it.
Patricia Shearman, a church member, said the organ is somewhat rare because it’s in relatively decent shape for its age. Organ restorer John Gass said, though, that if you play the organ now, “you would never know what you were going to get.”
Gass, who lives in Holden, has been working on the organ for four weeks and predicts it will take another three. “It’s a nice little instrument,” he said, in muted admiration of the rather large instrument.
When the organ is fixed up, the church plans to hold concerts with it and its black Steinway grand piano that once belonged to Minne Plummer of South Paris, a well-known opera singer known as Madame Scalar. She was the second wife of Dr. Charles A. Stephens.
“Any time you have additional musical instruments in a community,” Shearman said Tuesday, “it enhances the quality of life.”
For information phone Nancy Wood at 743-6683.
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