My mother’s father, Sven Svenson, immigrated from Sweden, and his brother was a Swedish Lutheran hymn writer. Martin Luther, founder of the Lutheran Church, is quoted as saying, “Next to the word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest gift”. So my mother’s family loved music! Visitors would say to my mother, “Dorothy, you have long fingers, you should play the piano!”, but they lived out in the country and couldn’t afford a piano. Also, there was no piano teacher nearby.

My mother’s parents gave a corner of their farm to the school district, so that they could build a one-room school building there for the country children. That’s where she and her brothers and sisters went to grade school. On Sunday afternoons, the pastor from the church in the village went there to preach his Sunday sermon for members of the country community.

My mother skipped 5th grade and when she graduated from eighth grade, she had no way to go to the village every day for high school. It was then that the pastor and his wife offered to let her stay with them during the week, so that she could go to high school.

When she walked into their house, she saw that they had a piano, and with excitement she said, “Oh, you have a piano!”. They responded, “Sure, you’re welcome to play it! Just take a hymnal!”. She knew nothing about how to read music, so it was then, when she was 13 years old, that she made a vow, “If I ever have a child with long fingers, that child will get to play the piano!”. Later, they found some people who would let her live with them in the nearby city, so that she could finish college. This is where my parents met.

Last year, when I went back to Illinois for my 65th high school reunion, I revisited Wisconsin, and stayed with one of my cousins there. She and her brother took me to the church where my mother had made that vow.

When my father’s mother was young, her daddy had cancer. They used to listen to a radio broadcast by a pastor in Illinois who told people that if they would write him a letter, he would write back and pray for them, that they would be healed. My grandmother told me a story, that one day when she came home from school, she found all her dad’s medicine in the garbage. She was sure that he had died! Instead, he had been miraculously healed! Eventually our whole family moved to Zion, Illinois to be near that pastor.

So when I was four years old we lived in a little village in the north-east corner of Illinois, about four blocks from the little community church. My mother wanted me to take piano lessons from the pastor’s wife, but my father was a school teacher and didn’t make much money. They were expecting another child, and we couldn’t afford a piano. My daddy said that if he was going to pay for piano lessons, I would have to walk to the church to practice everyday, and if I missed a day, I would get whipped. I never got whipped, but still, I've been practicing nearly every day since I was four years old. If the weather was too bad for me to walk to church, I had a piece of cardboard with keys drawn on it, so that I could practice on the dining room table.

Piano lessons started when I was at the age of four, and it was the same year that my best friend, Marty, three houses away, was six years old, and started first grade. She made a deal with me, that if I would go to their house every day after school, she and her sister, Ruth, who was eight years old, would teach me whatever she learned in first grade, and then second grade. They did that faithfully every week.

When I was six years old, the assistant Sunday School superintendent asked if I would accompany the children’s Sunday School music program, every Sunday. I loved it, and after the offering every week we sang, “Into My Heart”. I sang it every week while I played, “Come in today, Come in to stay. Come into my heart, Lord Jesus”. When I was eight, the church pianist/organist left, and I was given that job on probation. I’ve been playing for church, almost everywhere I’ve lived ever since then.

I finished grade school early and ended up in high school when I was only twelve years old. During this time, the choir director had a low bass voice, and due to this, he had the boy sopranos, and tenors, sit on the piano bench beside me, to learn the higher parts. I would sing their parts with them, while I was accompanying the choir.

I became the accompanist for the Lake County Philharmonic Choir when I was fourteen, and at sixteen was the youngest student ever accepted into the Eastman School of Music. At the end of that year, I received the Freshman Class George Eastman Award for that year.

My high school piano teacher in Waukegan had recommended a certain Eastman teacher, but he wasn’t as good as my high school teacher had been. During my sophomore year, I met a girl who was there to get her Master’s degree, and had graduated from DePauw University. She told me that DePauw had a new piano teacher, Glen Sherman (a prodigy of Rossina Lhevinne), who had taught at Julliard. He wasn’t allowed to teach there because he had arthritis, so now he was at DePauw. I transferred there, and he was the best teacher I ever had.

After graduating from DePauw with honors, I got to study with Madame Lhevinne at The Julliard School and then, at the Ecole Normale de Musique and the Nationale Conservatoire de Musique in Paris, France. While I was there, I performed at the American Church of Paris, and became the accompanist for the Paris Philharmonic Chorus.

Other groups I became involved with were performing in summer concerts with the Waukegan Municipal Band, and I got to be Jack Benny’s accompanist when he performed a violin concert, to start a music school in Waukegan.

After starting a family, we moved to a village west of Chicago. The neighbors invited us to go to a nearby church. The pastor there, Pastor Don Hamman, encouraged us to read our Bibles through in a year. If we did, he would take us out for lunch. This reading would only take about fifteen minutes a day. I had never really read the Bible much before, but I’ve been reading it like this ever since.

Later we moved to a suburb of Moline, Illinois, almost 200 miles from Chicago. I was praying about where we should go to church, and I remembered that the Moody Bible Institute radio station had another station in Moline. I called there, and asked if they would recommend a church for my family.

The man who answered the phone gave me the names of three churches, but said, “I can’t guarantee that these are the best churches, but this is what comes to my mind”. Then he said that the station manager would be there in the afternoon, and I could call him. When I called, First Evangelical Free Church, Moline, was also at the top of his list, so I contacted that church, and asked about their services. They told me that they had a children’s ministry on Wednesday evenings, and also an adult prayer meeting at that time. I asked about the children’s ministry and the Bible study, then I gave my name, so we could go there that night.

It was pretty crowded when we arrived! Before and after the Bible study, there was a song leader, leading songs, and an accompanist. After the Bible study was over, the secretary stood up, and said that she wanted to introduce “the new visitor”. When she said my name, the song leader screamed, “She taught me how to sing!”. This was one of the tenor boys who sat beside me when I was twelve years old, playing the piano in high school. He was not only the Director of Music, he also sang in the Davenport Philharmonic Chorus!

Needless to say, we continued in that church while we lived there, and that’s where a visiting pastor told us about the Philadelphia College of Bible, and the Navigator Bible Study. It is where you memorize a new Bible verse every day, and review twenty one verses. I had already started reading every day, so this time I started in the book of John, memorized several books, and now I’m in Hebrews!

Years later, while still playing at church every week, I became a pianist at the Oakbrook Nordstrom branch in Chicago. Eventually they chose me from all the Nordstrom pianists in the United States to move here, to open another branch. When I arrived here as a pianist, I was concerned that I would have to give up playing for church, but someone walked up to me while I was playing at Nordstrom and said, “My fiance and I want you to play for our wedding, and our church is looking for an organist”. The church was the Historic First Presbyterian Church in Phoenix.

My husband was a retired veteran chef who had grown up in a Presbyterian Church, so I thought that we should check it out. When I went to visit the church, they had a pipe organ worth around three million dollars. The pastor came down to meet me, and offered me the job.

Later, as the church seemed to be dwindling, and my husband had died, Duane, an organ enthusiast that I knew, told me that there was an opening for an organist at the North Scottsdale United Methodist Church. He said that even though the organ is digital, he could make it sound like pipes. He has done an incredible job! Many people come up to me and say, “Where are the pipes?”. He has spent many hours doing that, and I’m so grateful. I am currently the organist, pianist and hand bell choir director here.

Along with church, I used to also play the piano in the Marquesa Restaurant, at the Scottsdale Princess Resort, and as of now, I still play the piano every week at the Mayo Hospital.

It has been a long journey, and I’m still reading and memorizing the Bible. Each day I am overwhelmed by how appropriate the verses seem generally in today’s world, and to my life specifically. He has blessed me with a gift that I hope to share with you. May you be a witness of his love.