THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 7, 1996 TAG: 9604030056
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K2 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: MY JOB
SOURCE: BY KRYS STEFANSKY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines
LEE SPRY is in tune with his world.
In fact, pianists in churches all over the area played favorite hymns in perfect pitch this Easter morning thanks to Spry's sure and gentle touch.
He tunes pianos.
Carrying a couple of toolboxes and dressed in his cowboy boots, jeans and Western shirts, he's a familiar sight in local churches, homes, schools and concert halls.
There's nothing complicated in his tool kits - a few pliers, some wire, bottles and jars, and a tuning hammer.
The real secret to breathing life back into an off-key piano is in Spry's head. He has an exceptional ear for music.
``I had a friend, a piano tuner,'' he says in a slow drawl that hints of rural northeast Texas, where he lived for a while after leaving the Air Force.
They'd sit around on weekends, eating home cooking and picking their guitars, he says. ``We'd be tuning our instruments and he'd say, son, you ought to get in this business. You've got a pretty good ear and the people doing this are dying out.''
The idea sounded better the longer Spry worked his route as a paper products salesman.
``I became a Christian about that time,'' Spry says. Slowly, thoughtfully, he adds: ``I became concerned about some things that were required of me as a salesman.''
But at 36, with a wife and five children to support, it wasn't so easy to switch from job to job. What clinched it was Spry's hankering to own a piano himself. He bought an old upright player piano that needed a lot of work, rebuilt it after taking a piano-tuning course, then rebuilt a second one for a church in the Texas countryside. That's when ``the phone started ringing off the hook.''
He smiles through his salt and pepper beard and recalls a private conversation held about that time. ``I said, Lord, are you trying to tell me something?''
Evidently, yes.
That was 15 years ago.
``The thing I like about the job more than anything is I love to meet people,'' he says. ``And the second thing that's nice about it is to take an instrument that does not sound right and make it right. . . . All the strings being in tune is like a good marriage. They, too, are as one.''
He regularly corrects the pitch of the piano at his own church, tiny Willoughby Chapel in Norfolk's West Ocean View. That's where he is on this morning, sitting on the piano bench, one fist around the tuning hammer jutting up from the innards of the brown W.W. Kimball console that faces the altar. The fingers on his other hand are plinking the keys.
It's not a job for the impatient. In a full tuning, he adjusts the tension on each one of about 250 copper-wrapped and steel strings. Starting in the center, with the F above middle C, he locks his hammer onto every tuning pin. At his firm nudges, the strings quiver back into place, one after the other. It takes about two hours to do it right.
Pianos are affected by the weather, something all tuners keep in mind. Humidity makes the wood swell, puts extra tension on the wires and causes the sound to go sharp. Dryness shrinks wood and flattens the sound.
In schools and churches, where heat and air conditioning are turned off for long periods, pianos are more at the mercy of the elements.
Spry likes to tune the average person's piano about once a year, ideally once every six months. Professional pianists need extra tending.
``A concert pianist will want his piano tuned prior to rehearsal and then again as close to curtain time as possible,'' Spry says. ``And then they'll want you to stay to check it again at intermission.''
Sometimes Spry's job turns into a spectator sport, but only briefly - the work can seem monotonous for anybody watching.
``But it's not unusual for the children to gather around when I get to a house and start setting up, and sometimes their mama says, ``Don't show 'em how to get into it,'' he says with mock alarm.
When he finishes and before he leaves, he sometimes tests his handiwork by playing a hymn or two. His favorites are Southern gospel music and old hymns like ``Because He Lives'' and ``What a Day That Will Be.'' One of the most powerful, he allows, is ``How Great Thou Art.''
That's the hymn he played recently when a client overheard him in her living room.
``He plays beautifully,'' said the woman, the owner of a hand-painted upright. ``I was washing dishes in the kitchen when he started to play and I got tears in my eyes.''
When she wandered out to listen, Spry told her he didn't read music.
He plays by ear, just like he works. ILLUSTRATION: Photos
LAWRENCE JACKSON/The Virginian-Pilot
Lee Spry works on the piano at his own church, Willoughby Chapel in
Norfolk's West Ocean View.
Once Spry gets a piano in tune - the process takes about two hours -
he'll often bang out a hymn or two.
by CNB