People probably don’t know that I was once a Major League Baseball fan in my childhood and I faithfully listened to all the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball games with broadcaster Vin Scully who recently passed away.

In baseball, a doubleheader is a set of two games played between the same two teams on the same day. Historically, doubleheaders have been played in immediate succession, in front of the same crowd. Contemporarily, the term is also used to refer to two games played between two teams in a single day in front of different crowds and not in immediate succession. (Wikipedia)

It was baseball’s term of a “doubleheader” that I think describes my Sundays today and next week, although you could have said that about July 31st too. It means that I played two church services in a row, except in my case, the two services were in two different churches, with two different congregations, meaning that I had to play different music for both services.

In the case of July 31st, when I was asked to play the 10:00 am service at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu immediately after the 9:00 am service at Nuuanu Congregational Church, it meant that I had to leave the service a little early in order to get to LCH by the start of the service. Thanks to Daryl Akamichi who played the hymn after the sermon, the closing hymn and postlude!

Today however, I played the entire 9:00 am service at Nuuanu, and then supposedly had ample time to get to Iolani School to play the service at 10:30 am for the 100 or so boarding students. Alas, Chaplain Tim Morehouse had given me the wrong time (!), and by the time I parked the car and ran across campus to St. Alban’s Chapel, the students were already seated in the pews listening to some introductory remarks. As I passed him to get to the organ console, he whispered to me, “Sorry, I didn’t know the correct time that the students were going to arrive!”

I hurriedly put my music bag down on the bench and franticallly looked for my organ shoes. I found one of them right away, but the other seemed to elude me. Could I have left it at Nuuanu? Luckily, I found the errant shoe on the bottom of my bag. With about 10 seconds to spare, I started the prelude, only to discover that I had put my hands on the wrong manual, which I didn’t discover until after the piece was finished! I was wondering why the organ didn’t sound like I had set it up on Thursday when I came to practice and when I took these photos.

This was my first time back to the chapel in at least five years when I played a funeral here. There had been quite a few renovations since then, all to the good!

I ended up playing a prelude (“Be thou my vision” by Michael Burkhardt), a processional on “God of grace and God of glory” by Joel Martinson, an “anthem” on “Finlandia” by Robert J. Powell (the tune of the school’s alma mater), a recessional on “God of every nation” by Michael Burkhardt, and the third movement of Felix Mendelssohn’s Sonata in C minor as the postlude. Chaplain Morehouse told me the students were still prohibited from singing, due to the ongoing pandemic.

Next Sunday, I’ll have another “doubleheader” when I drive across town to play the 10:30 am Solemn High Mass at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church after the 9:00 am service at Nuuanu. It’s further than Iolani School, but at least I won’t have to park across campus in a parking structure. Karl Bachman who has been subbing there ever since Steven Severin moved to Tennessee, will be in Washington for a family wedding. He has been doing double duty, too, playing the 9:00 am service at Our Redeemer Lutheran then driving to St. Mark’s.

Such is the life of organists these days in a time when there are too few of us!

Right after the service, I hurriedly drove to the Waialae Country Club for the 90th birthday celebration of Patsy Ching, a parishioner and office volunteer whom I met and worked with during my 12 years at St. Elizabeth’s Episcopal Church as their parish administrator. It was so good to see familiar faces, but it’s been 7 years since I retired from that job… and we are all older, grayer, and more wrinkled! Patsy, though, looked fantastic!