Fisk Opus 148

Jennifer Lucy Bate, 75, born in London, UK, November 11, 1944, died March 25. She was the daughter of H. A. Bate, organist of St James’s Muswell Hill from 1924 to 1978. An international concert organist, she was considered an authority on the organ music of Olivier Messiaen, having befriended him within the last twenty years of his life as his organist of choice.

My foray into organbuilding was the result of a series of accidental discoveries and explorations. Entering the University of Nebraska, fall semester, 1962, I was an electrical engineering student, also taking a one-hour piano class lesson at the School of Music. Subsequently, I became a piano major with a minor in industrial arts.

Covering all the basses

I remember the first time I went to Fenway Park in Boston with my father to see a Red Sox game. I had watched many games on television, but those of us “of a certain age” remember what televisions were like in 1965 with foil-wrapped rabbit-ear antennas, bulbous black-and-white picture tubes, and fuzzy pictures. When Dad and I came out of the tunnel into the sunshine at Fenway, the outfield grass was the greenest I had ever seen. I was dazzled.

Thomas H. Anderson

Thomas H. Anderson, 86, of North Easton, Massachusetts, died December 30, 2023. Born May 25, 1937, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, he met his late wife Susan in Belfast, where they grew up on the same street.