ROANOKE TIMES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, November 11, 1993                   TAG: 9311110273
SECTION: NEIGHBORS                    PAGE: S-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: CHARLES STEBBINS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long


ST. PAUL'S ORGAN TURNED INTO 10,000 PIECE PUZZLE

To Warwick Kerr, organs, the United States, the English language and Scotland are all rather compatible.

He is well versed in all of them even though he is a lifelong citizen of Brazil.

Kerr is a professional organ builder who speaks English almost perfectly. And he has both American and Scottish ancestry.

"My grandfather and grandmother migrated from Memphis, Tenn., to Brazil," he said.

Both of his grandparents were Americans and his grandfather had roots in Scotland.

In Tennessee, his grandfather had been a farmer but in Brazil he went into real estate.

And because of his close ties to this area Kerr felt right at home during October while he was in Salem disassembling an organ to take back to Brazil. He took apart the organ in St. Paul's Episcopal Church on Salem's Main Street.

Kerr, an affable man with a wry sense of humor, says he is "kidnapping," or rather, "organ-napping," St. Paul's organ.

Eventually he will reassemble it in United Presbyterian Church in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

St. Paul's is giving the organ to the Brazilian church because St. Paul's is getting a new one free from an anonymous donor.

The two churches got together through an international organ clearinghouse.

Kerr said disassembling the organ was easy and went relatively quickly, although it took the whole month of October. The real job will be putting it back together again in Brazil.

"That will be the 10,000-piece puzzle," he said.

He estimated it will take about a year working part time to reassemble the organ.

"But I will spend most of that time on rewiring," he said.

Kerr plans to replace all the wiring but otherwise, he said, the organ is in good shape. It is a Moller, which St. Paul's bought new in 1930.

"This is a good organ," he said. "And it is going to sound better after I get it set up in Sao Paulo."

He explained that in St. Paul's the organ was in a small room with a low ceiling, which muffled the sound. But in the Presbyterian church in Sao Paulo it will be in the open with nothing to impede the tones.

A complication to the reassembly, however, will be that Sao Paulo has a climate with much higher humidity than Salem's.

"That will make the wood swell," he said.

The higher humidity comes about because Sao Paulo is in a semitropical area with a climate much the same as the Caribbean's. And the seasons are reversed from those in the United States because Brazil is in the southern hemisphere, where October and November are spring months.

To overcome the problems of wood swelling, Kerr said, he will have to reassemble the wood parts as quickly as possible.

"I can't let it lie around in a warehouse," he said.

Even though he spoke of a 10,000-piece puzzle, Kerr does not know how many pieces the organ has. He does know there are thousands.

While taking it apart he carefully marked each piece with numbers and letters in his native Portuguese.

"I also took pictures," he said, to provide a visual record of how the pieces were attached.

Kerr is a member of United Presbyterian and is doing the work at no cost. He said his fee for a job like this would be about $8,000. The church in Sao Paulo has about $20,000 to cover other expenses of getting the organ.

This week, the disassembled organ, each piece wrapped in foam and tape and packed in a shipping container, is to begin the long journey to Brazil aboard a ship.

Kerr, 49, has been working on organs since he was a teen-ager, when he became interested in how United Presbyterian's electronic organ worked.

Eventually - in the early 1960s - the church sent him on the first of three trips to the Hammond Organ Co.'s factory in Chicago so he could learn enough about electronic organs to become the church's resident organ repairer.

It was about that time that Kerr and the church's organist got married.

"I began taking care of the organ and the organist," he said with his easy laugh.

Kerr does not play the organ - or any instrument - but his business partner does play the organ.

When asked why he wanted to learn English, he indicated it was necessary because English is becoming the universal language.

"For one thing, I have a Scottish name," he said. "People hear it and ask me if I speak English."

Kerr's father spoke English but he did not speak it at home. So Kerr had to learn English in Brazil's public schools. But this was mostly "reading English," he said. To learn conversational English he entered a private language school after he became an adult.

Kerr said most of the people from foreign countries that he deals with in the organ business speak English.

Only one other family member is involved in music. Kerr has a brother who is an orchestra conductor in Rio de Janeiro. He has a son who Kerr said has no interest in music. The athletic type, he holds a black belt in karate.

It was in 1970 that Kerr began working with pipe organs. The owner of a pipe organ business in Sao Paulo died, Kerr said, and the heirs asked him to take it over.

Kerr has disassembled many organs, but this is the first time he's been outside Brazil to do it.

One job he regards as memorable was several years ago when he dismantled a 2,000-pipe organ in a Catholic cathedral in Sao Paulo and reassembled it in a Baptist church in Rio de Janeiro.

He said that took about a year and required him to live in Rio for three months.



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