White gives organ new home

This past Sunday, the congregation at Circleville United Methodist Church welcomed its newest member — a Möller Opus pipe organ originally built in 1941 that came all the way from Philadelphia, Pa. with the help of Lucas White and his friends.

“I’ve kind of made it my goal this summer to get organs at Buck’s Grove and Circleville,” said White, a 2025 graduate of Holton High School who’s been playing for the combined congregation of the two Methodist churches for about a year.

The 85-year-old organ, including 198 pipes self-contained in an eight-foot cabinet, is still in great working shape, said White, who’s also known for playing the organ at Holton’s First Methodist Church.

“I just like playing the organ,” he said. “I think every church needs a little organ for congregational singing. Here, we play a lot of traditional hymns, and we were using the piano for everything. I thought we needed something different.”

While searching for an organ for the Circleville church, White said he came across the Möller organ for sale in “The Diapason,” a magazine that focuses on organs, carillons and church music. The organ had originally been used at Lombard Central Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, but was purchased by an individual who took it to a different church and, eventually, to his home.

“This is a $50,000 organ,” White said. “But we got it for $5,000, because the guy wanted it to go to a church.”

The Circleville congregation put together about $1,500 to go toward the purchase of the organ, with White taking care of the rest. With the money in hand, he and a few friends — including one of his HHS classmates, Jacob Huyett — flew to Washington, D.C., and took the train from there to Philadelphia to make the purchase.

“We packed it all up in a day,” White said of the organ. “We had to take all the pipes out, wrap them individually in bubble wrap, rented a 26-foot U-Haul and drove all the way back. It took about 24 hours to get home, and we did it in two days. But it was quite the experience.”

Once the organ had arrived in Circleville, White had to remember how to put the organ back together, taking a six-hour crash course in organ maintenance, including YouTube videos put together by organ experts. Nevertheless, he said, learning how to put it back together “wasn’t too hard.”

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