If you read my last post, “The kids did it!” you know that over the weekend, my younger students gave a concert, after which they assembled a two rank pipe organ kit, called Orgelkids.

If you read further back, when our local chapter of the American Guild of Organists was considering getting one of these kits as an outreach project, we contacted Erin Scheessele, the Executive Director of Orgelkids USA. I wrote this in my post, “Orgelkids coming to Hawaii“:

And my first thought was, we need an Orgelkids kit here in Hawaii! With the support of the Hawaii Chapter American Guild of Organists, the Executive Board signed a contract to purchase a kit. The cost is $6,000 plus shipping and the cost of a shipping storage crate. Just today, we received an email from Erin Scheessele, the Executive Director of Orgelkids USA, who sent us the first picture of the Hawaii instrument! It is being built by Terry Lambert and Christo Fralick, located in Eugene, OR. They both worked many years with John Brombaugh as members of his organbuilding firm. Chris was John’s workshop foreman for over 12 years.

Today I received this note from Erin Scheessele:

Hi, Katherine,

I shared one of your blog articles today on Orgelkids USA’s Facebook page, copied you on a long email I sent to Karl Bachman, then opened a publication from Duke University to find your name, yet again 🙂 I’ve attached a photo of the article about your student, Joseph Fala.

There’s a sweet little swallows nest organ in the Duke Memorial Chapel built by Brombaugh & his 2 associates who are now building Orgelkids USA.

My husband & I were undergrads at Duke. Evan sang in the choir for 6 years. I hope Joseph loves his time there as much as we did.

First off, there’s the fact that Erin and her husband are Duke University grads, and she happened to receive the alumni publication with my former student Joey Fala’s picture and bio in it.

Secondly, the swallows nest organ at Duke was built by John Brombaugh, whose firm is now building Orgelkids kits!

Here are the two photos Erin sent me:

It’s all too amazing for words!