'I missed all the good weekends'
In the summer of 1996, through some connections, I landed a part-time gig writing for two weekly newspapers: The Cass Lake (Minn.) Times and the Northwoods Press of Nevis, Minn. During the summer while I was interning at The Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer, I also wrote a number of features and covered some Laporte (Minn.) School Board meetings for these two papers. I ended up with some great stories, and received a food following among their readers.
July 11, 1996
By Devlyn Brooks
Talking to 91-year-old Augusta "Gussie" Kearney one can sense an intimate bond between her and her organ playing.
Maybe it is because she has been playing piano since she was 8, or maybe it is because most of Kearney's life has revolved around playing the organ.
Whatever it is, you can see the twinkle in her eyes when she talks about her organ and the dismay when she talks about not being able to play.
Her organ has been silent lately, as the organ she plays Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays at Stony Point Resort has been broken since the Monday before Memorial Day.
Kearney has played at Stony Point, owned by her niece and nephew-in-law, on weekends for four years now and has missed few days in that stretch, but it has been more than a month since she has played for "her" crowd.
"It just makes me sick," she said. "I should be playing now. I missed all the good weekends."
Organ playing for Kearney is not just a chance to entertain; it seems as if it is the lifeblood on which she lives, because he life has followed a path of music.
It began more than 80 years ago when her half-sister taught her to play the piano at the age of 8, and after, it was her childhood and adulthood dream to learn to play the organ.
A dream which would not be fulfilled for more than 20 years.
She never had the chance to play an organ until after she was married and her husband, Louis Kearney, bought her one. It was sweet sorrow for Kearney, though; her husband had to sell her baby grand piano to buy it.
Louis did it for her because he knew what a dream it was to play the organ, she said, but her husband was so fond of her piano playing, he told her that if that if she could not learn to play the organ, he was going to take it back again to get the piano.
It was her piano playing that brought her and Louis together, Kearney said. She was living in Chicago working as a nanny and basically feeling miserable because she did not have a piano to play. She was homesick.
One day the mother of the man she worked for was over and asked why Kearney was so sad. She was told that Kearney was homesick and missed her piano. The mother said that was not a problem because she had a piano at her house and a son whom she would like Kearney to meet.
Kearney said she agonized over whether to go to the house for two weeks before she did. When she arrived, her future husband answered the door.
"'Where have you been? We've been waiting for you for two weeks,' he said," Kearney said. "The first place we went was straight to the piano bench."
Kearney said he asked her to play for him and she did. "'That does it. I'm never going to touch this piano again,' he said. 'You're going to do all the playing from now on,'" Kearney said. "I didn't know what he meant by that at the time."
What he meant was he had decided he wanted to marry her, and he asked her five days after meeting her. Kearney said she was flabbergasted and told him she had to think about it. She did, and they were married seven days after they met.
Kearney said it was hard to learn to play the organ, but she did not want to lost it. So, she would practice for hours while her husband was at work, she said.
Then heard the song "Fascination" on the radio and decided she was going to learn to play it. She played it one day when her husband walked through the door from work.
"He was standing there crying," she said. "He said, 'You made it.' I said, 'I made it.'" It has been her theme song ever since.
Since then, Kearney's life has revolved around the organ. She has taught people to play the piano and organ since the 1930s when she and her husband moved back to her hometown of Fairmont.
She later taught music for more than 10 years at Schmitt Music Company and Northwest Organ and Piano, both in the Twin Cities.
She also played at the Bemidji Country Club, the Flying Dutchman Café of Walker and the Vacationaire Resort in Park Rapids after she and her husband retired to the Cass Lake area.
Now, sitting in the bar at Stony Point, her playing can be heard every weekend during the summer. In fact, she plays every song from memory. She no longer needs sheet music, which shocks her admirers, she said.
"People just can't get over the fact I can play without sheet music," she said. "I can read music. ... I just have it in my head. That's the best explanation I have. They get a kick out of it. I sort of do myself."
"She can sit there all evening and play without music," said Delbert Gangelhoff, her nephew-in-law.
She has a secret, though. She does cheat a little. She uses a piece of paper with the names of the songs on it that she plays, which even include Elvis songs, her niece, Kay Gangelhoff said.
"She just loves the music from the '40s, '50s, and '60s ... the big band sound," Kay said. "She's really missed it this month. We're hoping we can get her back out here pretty soon."
About a week ago, Delbert had to haul the organ into the Melody Shop in Bemidji for it to be fixed because he could not find anybody who knew what was wrong with it. "They kept thinking it was just a tube," he said, "but that wasn't the problem."
So, for now, the organ sits in Bemidji waiting to be fixed and nobody knows when that will be, Kearney sits at home pining to play her organ again; and her crowd keeps calling Stony Point and asking, "Is Gussie playing yet?"
"Well, it's in the cards. Maybe I'm being punished for something I did," said Kearney, sitting in her house longingly looking at her own organ.
"If I ever can't play there anymore. I'll be through."
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