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Early Years

Richard S. Hedgebeth was born at home on November 20, 1943 in Avon Park, Florida. A train wreck had left nearby hospitals overtaxed, with maternity cases not considered a priority. Earliest memory is of a visit to the winter headquarters of the Ringling Bros., Barnum and Bailey Circus. Vivid impressions remain of the giraffes (tall), hippos (big), and lions (the awesome roars!).

At the age of two, the family moved to Daytona Beach. The strongest memory from this period is of hearing a neighbor lady screaming her head off. It seems that she thought that she had left the hose out, only to discover in going to put it away that it was, in fact, a very long black snake!

In 1948 the family was again on the move, this time to Dickinson, North Dakota. This was just in time to begin grade school. It happened at the time that a new school was beginning to be built. The construction process fascinated me, following the progress as the building evolved (frequently sneaking onto the construction site). Recognition that someone actually had to be responsible for bringing this all together proved to be the spark which kindled my lifelong interest in architecture. Classmates wanted to be firemen and policemen - I wanted to be an architect. It was also in Dickinson that my interest in the organ began. This occurred when there was a substitute organist at church one Sunday who actually played real organ music! It was the E. Power Biggs arrangement of the Walond Introduction and Toccata. This was a revelation. The usual fare of undistinguished trash had never caught my ear or generated the least bit of interest on my part. I then began studying the piano, but quickly became bored with John W. Schaum. The teacher (also the perpetrator of the usual fare as the church organist) then declined to teach me further, saying that I was completely devoid of talent.

Prior to my first year of middle school, (junior high in those days), we relocated to Bismarck, North Dakota. We all enjoyed Bismarck very much. It was by far the family favorite of the places we lived in our formative years - a vibrant cultural life and a superb school system. In high school I was active in the band, where I played the tuba, and in Playmakers, the theater organization. It was in Bismarck, too, that my interest in the keyboard reawakened, and I learned several piano pieces without the benefit of proper tutelage.

In the middle of my junior year in high school we found ourselves in Medfield, Massachusetts, at that time a rather provincial exurb of Boston. I was a member of the band there, too, this time playing the baritone horn. While at Medfield, I was an exhibitor at the state science fair and was awarded a Letter of Commendation from the National Merit Scholarships. I also lent a bit of assistance to a group of engineers at the local Unitarian Church who were undertaking what proved to be a very credible job of restoring their Estey organ. My first job as an organist was here, at the Episcopal Church, playing their one manual Estey electric reed organ.

In the fall of 1961, I entered Elon College (now University) with the intention of majoring in physics. This, as I saw it, was as a prelude to eventually pursuing a degree and career in architecture. Fate intervened, however. Seeking an interesting elective, I found that I could take organ lessons! I began study with Fred Sahlman, who was professor of piano there at the time. As a double whammy the Ernest Skinner organ was being rebuilt at the time. It wasn't long before I realized that the real passion in my life was going to be the pipe organ, although at the time I thought that it would be as an organist. This newfound passion was found at the expense of my other studies, and I was not to return after my freshman year.

The following year was spent as a special student at the New England Conservatory of Music. I studied piano and theory, and began my study of the organ with Donald Willing, enrolling the next year as a student in the Diploma course, a non-academic curriculum with emphasis on performance. While there, I found myself often to be the "go-to guy" for things like putting the pedal pallet springs back in the Metzler organ when they jumped out, freeing the relay magnets on the Noehren organ when they hung up on their burned off contacts and the like. It was here that I found my appreciation of slider chests and mechanical action. Organs there at the time were by Metzler, Rieger, Hammarberg, Noack, Noehren and Aeolian-Skinner, and the large Hutchings-Skinner in Jordan Hall. The latter was at that time so little used that it was necessary to play it for hours when it was called upon to be used to rid it of dead notes.

Work History

Out of school, I found myself looking for a job to supplement the income being received from a minor church job. It happened that the Boston Organ Club visited the church's fine organ by George Ryder. It was on this occasion that I met some of the guys from the Andover Organ Company. As fate would have it, Andover found itself shorthanded for the Christmas maintenance season due to installation commitments. They had learned that I could tune and hired me to assist with the Christmas tunings. At the end of this, it seemed that they were sufficiently impressed that I found myself with a job! Thus ensued a very rewarding three-year period in which I received an excellent grounding in woodworking and organ work in general. During that period I worked in both the old organ and new organ departments, unusual for the company at that time. The large maintenance organization there exposed me to an enormous variety of organs. During my tenure there I did most of the maintenance work at the Methuen Memorial Music Hall.

The next step on my path led me to the Philip A. Beaudry Company. My position there became defined as Director of Operations, which included functioning as shop foreman and performing many of the general administrative tasks. It was with Phil that I developed my voicing skills, which had begun in a small way at Andover. The company's output from this period included several rebuilds of very high quality.

A brief stay followed this with the Berkshire Organ Company. My job title at Berkshire was Managing Director of Mechanical-actioned Organs, a title that could only have been conceived by David Cogswell. This was decidedly a poor fit, and I left after having overseen two rebuilding projects. The most rewarding aspect of this period was having had the opportunity to be involved in the early training of David Wigton, my assistant at the time.

Upon leaving Berkshire, I founded the Stuart Organ Company (Stuart being my middle name). The first project was a rebuild of a Carl Barkhoff organ for the Congregational Church in Hinsdale, Massachusetts. Most of the work was done in the church, with the casework being built in Phil Beaudry's shop with the assistance of his employees. At the beginning of our second project, I established a shop in Springfield, Massachusetts. This was soon outgrown and a move was made to the Aldenville section of Chicopee, Massachusetts. From this location all of the work was accomplished for all of the projects from Opus 7R through 43J. Opus 45R was rebuilt largely on site, with some shopwork performed at William Baker's shop in Hatfield, Massachusetts. We feel very privileged to have always had very interesting projects. The important projects of the Henry Pratt restoration (oldest surviving New England-built organ), the restoration of the 17th century organ for the Old Narragansett Church and the completion work on the large Hook organ at St. Mary's, New Haven must especially be cited.

A couple of years of various organ and non-organ pursuits ensued prior to beginning a year's work at the Bow-Mar Millwork Company, Mardella Springs, Maryland. Bow-Mar is a high-end millwork company and I had the opportunity of doing a lot of mortise and tenon, raised panel and circle work, improving my skills in those areas.

In November of 1991 I joined Foley-Baker, Inc. as Tonal Director. At this point in its history the company, to this point known for maintenance and basic rebuild projects, was beginning to be called upon for more comprehensive projects. An in-house voicer was required and I was to fill that need. In time my duties expanded to also include case design, drafting (Generic Cadd) and technical interface with suppliers (specifying and ordering pipework, relays and other custom equipment). I also constructed a fair amount of Skinner replica chestwork. Projects I was involved with FBI to a greater or lesser extent included installation of the organ in St. John's Church, Stamford, Connecticut, the very high quality installation of a Wurlitzer in a new Jersey residence and the restorations of the organs in the First Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston.

In something of a respite from the organ world, I operated Allstar Tools.com for three years. Selling tools (mostly Freud and Starrett) online, I did everything including website design and maintenance (decidedly helpful in putting this site together).

This overlapped somewhat with several years as a subcontractor of pipe organ services. Highlights of this period include about two years spent as a contract voicer, both flues and reeds) for Austin during Bruce Buchanan's tenure and involvement in completion of the organ begun by Guilbault-Thérien for Our Lady of Mercy, Potomac, Maryland.

This period has been followed by a year in Baltimore spent as Shop Manager for David M. Storey, Inc.

After much consideration I have made the decision to resume operations as Stuart Organ Company. This enterprise will be based in Binghamton, New York. I seek to provide a comprehensive range of pipe organ services, from tuning and maintenance, consultation and freelance services through building and rebuilding  of organs.

A Stuart Organ Company website is available at http://stuartorgan.com.