Group pipes up to save Roosevelt High organ

By Joanna Horowitz
Seattle Times staff reporter

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It has been decades since her father, Cecil Bullock, former Roosevelt vice principal, played weekly organ concerts in the mornings before school.

And now no one may ever play the instrument again.

The organ sits quiet, pipes packed and keyboard console wrapped tight in Seattle School District storage, waiting for its fate to be determined.

The classical organ, purchased in 1940 as a memorial for Roosevelt's first principal, V.K. Froula, has been in the school auditorium for 64 years. Now that Roosevelt is undergoing a major renovation, Bardarson and the 28 others in the Friends of Roosevelt High School Froula Memorial Organ must raise $115,000 to move it to its new home.

A place will be reserved for the organ in the new school theater, but the district can't afford to cover the cost of refurbishing and installing the instrument.

The organ and one at Franklin High School are the only two pipe organs in Seattle's public schools, according to Carl Dodrill, president of the Pipe Organ Foundation, a Seattle-based nonprofit dedicated to organ preservation and playing.

Gary Baldasori, program manager for the Seattle School District's Building Excellence, said the design team, made up of faculty, parents and community members, didn't see the justification for spending that sort of money on an organ that rarely gets played. The team put it at the end of the priority list. The district, however, is building a digital-music studio.

"How does the organ fit into the big educational program?" he said. "Answer is: It doesn't."

The Froula group hopes it will have a place in the educational program in the future. But if the group doesn't raise $90,789 by Oct. 1, the organ will stay in storage indefinitely.

"It would be terrible," said Dodrill, who is also a member of the Froula board. "It would be a real loss."
 
Froula served as principal from 1922, when Roosevelt opened, until he died of a heart attack in November 1938 at the age of 65. He was enormously popular, and the community quickly came together to find a way to memorialize Froula. They picked the organ because of his passion for music and musical theater.

The organ cost $3,100; today a similar organ would run about $150,000, Dodrill said.

"It was quite an accomplishment for a community still feeling the effects of a very big (economic) depression," Bardarson said.

The organ was custom-made by the Moller Organ Co. in Hagerstown, Md., and included unique elements for an organ so small. Some of the larger pipes are 16 feet. Two reed pipes make sounds like a trumpet and oboe. It also has a set of swell shades, which operate like the vent on an air conditioner to diffuse sound. A special shade at the back signals stagehands that the show is starting.

"I've never seen one exactly like it," Dodrill said.

The organ was dedicated at a ceremony in the fall of 1940. Bardarson remembers a festive, elegant evening when three organists played to a packed auditorium.

At 92, Wallace Seely's long fingers can still fly across the organ keys effortlessly. They fold in his lap as he talks about one of his largest performances ever, the dedication ceremony for the Froula organ. At 28, he was the youngest of the three.

"I was scared stiff," Seely said. "The room was full."

The organ was played by school staff members and students almost every day over the next 20 years until trends in music began to shift in the 1960s. Electric instruments became the norm, and the school stopped teaching organ.

But Dodrill said he thinks the organ's popularity is on the rise, and he called electronic imitations of the instrument "just a fad." He said organ builders in the area stay busy and that churches are moving back to traditional sounds.

"This is where the depths are," he said.

The Froula board hopes a newly restored organ will inspire students to start learning how to play the instrument, though Dodrill admits there's no guarantee the improvements will bring high-school students to its keys.

The refurbished Froula would have digital capabilities, allowing students to hook up the organ to recording equipment in the school's new digital-music studio.

According to Andrea Wilson, president of the Froula board, the group has raised $9,834 so far from individual donations and the Puget Sound Theatre Organ Society. The group has applied for money from three foundations and will know next month if any came through.

"We're not going to be able to raise that (money) by car washes and selling T-shirts," Wilson said. As a result, parents are spearheading the effort.

Wilson said the organ must be saved for future generations.

"We have to make history livable," she said, "instead of putting it on a pedestal and making it unusable."

Joanna Horowitz: 206-464-3312 or jhorowitz@seattletimes.com