NEW ORLEANS, June 17 (UPI) -- A group of pipe organ enthusiasts based at a Seattle church have donated a rebuilt organ assembled from bits and pieces to a New Orleans church.
Blessed Seelos parish did not lose its organ in Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported. The church, gutted in 2003 by a fire and rebuilt, survived the hurricane, although its parish house was damaged by the storm.
Four Seattle churches, including Mercer Island Presbyterian, sent volunteers to New Orleans in early 2006 to help Blessed Seelos, a Catholic parish, rebuild. Carl Dodrill, a professor of medicine with a passion for pipe organs, learned that the church needed an organ.
Dodrill, his wife, Halie, and other members of the Pipe Organ Foundation, assembled a working organ from parts of seven or eight old ones. They tested it in Seattle before disassembling the organ for shipment to New Orleans.
"It's a ministry," Dodrill says of his restoration work. "It's not for churches, per se. It's for people. The pipe organ is uplifting to the human soul. It buoys up spirits."
