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Pieced-together organ rings out in rural community

Started by KB7DQH, December 25, 2011, 07:56:18 AM

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KB7DQH

http://www.standard.net/stories/2011/12/18/pieced-together-organ-rings-out-rural-community

QuoteBy Anita Kersey
Standard-Examiner correspondent
Wed, 12/21/2011 - 4:17pm


HOOPER -- Like many homes in this little country town, Hal and Joyce Stoddard's property has a metal-roofed barn out back.

Unlike every other barn, though, the Stoddards' has a magnificent, homemade pipe organ and has become known far and wide as the Hoopernacle Organ Barn. Hal and Joyce play host every year to a Christmas concert series that starts at 7 tonight with the organ as the booming centerpiece.

The concerts are the Stoddards' Christmas gift to the community for all who want to gather together and celebrate the season with carols and reminiscing at the Hoopernacle Organ Barn.

"The organ is pretty well-known in these parts, and everyone is welcome to come and join in," Joyce said. "We have even had a wedding here."

But all of this didn't happen overnight. It has taken 25 years and started with Hal's dream of wanting to own his own pipe organ.

Hal had been taking organ lessons from Wayne Devereaux, who at the time was the organist for the Ogden LDS Tabernacle.

After about five years, Devereaux put Hal in contact with organ technician Merv Brown, who maintained the Salt Lake Tabernacle organ. At the time, Brown was remodeling an organ in the Methodist church in Ogden, using parts from a console stored in a shed in Uintah.

Brown told Hal that he could have the console, which became the impetus for a major project. Through other connections, he eventually got pipes and chimes.

"We put that organ together like a puzzle, with pieces coming from many different places," Hal said. "It took three or four years before I got any sound out of it."

He said it has been put together with parts of at least four used organs. Today, it has more than 2,000 pipes and 32 pedals. Some of its parts are historic, such as the console that was once used in Lincoln Center in New York City and later sold to Dr. Robert Schuller's Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif.

Hal explained that the organ barn is his creation, but it was actually named Hoopernacle by former Standard-Examiner reporter Don Baker, who compared it to the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City.

The view is impressive as soon as you walk through the barn doors. There sits a huge console, with Hal sitting on the bench, a music maestro at home with his creation.

The barn has a life and personality of its own, inspired out of want, hope and a desire to share with all who enter. Three walls are lined with hundreds of organ pipes and chimes, with some rising to the ceiling. Memorabilia fills the place -- pictures of family, friends and guests who have shared in the festivities. The several rows of pews and benches have been donated from various churches.

Hal can now pretty well maintain the organ himself. His hands fly over the keys as he plays and adjusts banks of draw knobs.

He stops and listens, says, "Did you hear that?" and starts adjusting until the offending note sounds right to him.

Hal said his wife has to remind him that this is an organ in a barn and not in a cathedral. Although Christmas is a special time for the Stoddards and friends to perform for all who want to come, Hal plays the organ all year round. He said he favors French classical music and the works of Johann Sebastian Bach and Charles Widor.

"But I also just get a thrill of trying to play music I've heard in the tabernacle that brings people to hear and inspire and uplift them to bring honor and glory to our Heavenly Father," he said.

In doing so, Hal Stoddard is living his own dream, inspiring and uplifting himself and his friends and neighbors through the power of his music.

Merry Christmas...

Eric
KB7DQH
The objective is to reach human immortality—that is, to create things which are necessary to mankind, necessary to the purpose of the existence of mankind, and which have become the fruit that drives the creation of a higher state of mankind than ever existed before."