Bruce Family Organ Finds Its Way Home

WAITSBURG -- As clear as day, Craig Funabashi remembers the first time he saw his grandmother's Story & Clark Victorian pump organ.

He was six and visiting the Seattle area with his parents from Long Beach.

As they would for many years to come, he and his family traveled up to Whidbey Island for his grandmother's Sept. 5 birthday and family reunion.

They would meet at the cabin where Vangee Johnston kept the ornate wooden instrument and played many old- time Ragtime favorites for her grand kids -- seven in all.

"There are two things I remember about the organ -- how ornate it was and how tall it was for a kid my age," Funabashi said about the instrument that towers 6.5 feet above the floor. "I remember us kids would be on our knees on the floor to take turns pumping the pedals by hand for grandma and she would play all these songs off the top of her head."

Just the way Johnston had when she visited her grandparents, the Bruces, and played the same organ in the parlor of the stately Bruce Mansion.

For that is where the tale of the Story & Clark begins and ends.

Thanks to the generosity of Funabashi and his sister, who inherited the organ after the passing of their mother, Johnston's daughter Carline, the turnof the-century instrument is back in its original place.

"The thing is just spectacular," said Waitsburg Historical Society President Jeff Broom. Broom was the one who received a call from Funabashi late last year with an offer to donate the organ to the organization.

Pioneer of the Year and longtime piano player Jane Butler couldn't agree more.

"It's such a showpiece," she said, after trying out the organ in the mansion's parlor last week. "It really fits the house."

With Butler tickling the ivories, the reedy tones from the lofty instrument once again filled the space where more than a century ago families from Waitsburg gathered around the equally ornate 6-foot Round Oak wood stove and accompanied the tones with their voices.

"There wasn't a whole lot of entertainment, so they would have these sing-alongs on Saturday nights," said Funabashi, who recalls his grandmother telling her grandkids about the days when she was growing up in Waitsburg.

After it arrived all crated up for the journey from the Los Angeles (Funabashi lives in Redondo Beach), members of the Waitsburg Historical Society placed it against the south wall of the parlor under the watchful eye of pioneers Adolph & Petranella Hermanns, John and Preston Hays and Jane and David Roberts.

The parlor is a generous room with high ceilings and tall windows with red velvet curtains.

By the bay window overlooking Main Street, an Edison phonograph projects its funneled horn into the space with its thick flowery carpet.

" This room was reserved for formal gatherings," said Broom, his eyes falling on the decor around the Story & Clark, which sits there as though it never left.

But it did, presumably in the 1920s.

Funabashi said he opened a top portion of the organ once to locate the original product numbers and get a more detailed history about the instru- ment he saw yearly when he grew up.

But Story & Clark stopped making pump organs decades ago and the matching information was lost.

From a review of Internet references to the Story & Clark model Funabashi inherited, it appears to be a Kimball Victorian Parlor Organ from the late 1800s, built in Chicago.

I t must have been shipped from there to Waitsburg, where the Bruce Family built its mansion in the 1880s.

Funabashi's grandmother, born on Sept. 5, 1911, as Evangeline Ellen Abbey, would have had access to it there until the Bruce family sold their home in 1922.

Johnston, whose first husband di ed whe n Funabashi's own mother was two, and whose second husband, Ed Johnston later adopted her as his own, moved to Seattle and became well-known throughout the state as Washington's Grand Organist for the Order of the Eastern Star.

After the sale of the Bruce house in the 1920s, Vangee Johnston took the organ with her and eventually took it to her family's cabin on Whidbey Island, where Funabashi first laid eyes on it beneath a giant set of antlers under a vaulted ceiling.

After Vangee Johnston passed away in 1998, Funabashi's mother had it shipped to Long Beach, where she later set it up in her condo.

When Carline Johnston passed away in March last year, she left the family treasure to Funabashi and his sister.

Although Funabashi's own wife is an accomplished pianist, they realized quickly they neither could nor wanted to hang on to it. The couple already owns an electric piano that fits better with their home's modern furniture.

After it became clear Funabashi's sister didn't want it either, donating it to the Waitsburg Historical Society seemed like the right and logical thing to do, the southern California home inspector said.

"I didn't really have to think about it," he said, explaining that selling the organ was never a consideration.

A search of various websites shows Story & Clarks of a turn-of-century vintage trade hands for $1,000 to $1,500. But Funabashi's connection to the instrument was far less material, valuing it far more for all his priceless childhood memories at his grandmother's feet by the pump pedals.

The cure for that nostalgia may be a trip from Redondo to Waitsburg, where Funabashi has never set foot. Such a visit, part family reunion and part walk down Memory Lane, would be worth it just to see the Story & Clark in its original home, he said.

Funabashi and other members from his family on his mother's side may be doing just that this summer. And if not, he is surrendered to its future.

"Whether I'll ever see it again or not, I know it will be well taken care of," Funabashi said.