The organ world is mourning the passing of longtime organist and teacher, Marilyn Mason, who died on April 4th at the age of 93.

You can read her complete obituary here, but now I will share an anecdote of her trip to Hawaii in 2007 which I’ve never told before.

For those who don’t know, there is a very small room behind the organ console. Marilyn was back there, waiting for my signal to let her know that the concert would be starting in a few minutes.

She grabbed my hands and pulled me closer towards her and said, “Will you pray with me?”

To say that I was shocked is an understatement! Honestly, I was a bit startled by all this!

Still holding onto both of my hands, she then said a short prayer about hoping that God would be with her and that the concert would go well.

Then she said, “Now I want you to fix my hair,” and handed me a comb. You must remember that that this was the first time I met her, so I was taken aback.

“You look just fine to me!”

She insisted that I look at her hair again, and I made a feeble gesture of trying to pat the top of her head.

“Everything is just fine.”

Go back and read the post I wrote when she was recognized for a record 67 years of teaching organ at the University of Michigan: Longevity. I related the story about when she came to dinner at my condo with her former Honolulu students, John McCreary and Samuel Lam. At that time, she made a comment about the color of John’s hair—she apparently had not seen him since he was a student at the University of Michigan—and was shocked to see that it was white rather than brown.

With John McCreary and Samuel Lam

I also wrote about Marilyn’s woman companion, Renate McLaughlin, whom I met many years later at an Organ Historical Society convention. Neither of us remembered seeing each other in Honolulu in my apartment!

What are the odds? Here’s the post, which also shows Marilyn Mason’s signature in my guest book.

UPDATE: Here is Marilyn Mason’s obituary in the New York Times.