Mary Rhodes: Pulling Out All the Stops

A church organist reflects on a “two‑week” fill‑in job that became a 50‑year calling and shares how sacred music, sacrifice, and joy shape her life at the keyboard.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hey there. This is Arts Fell on Alabama.
This organ's powerful. It can, it can shake the rafters in this church.
Fifty years ago, about the last thing on Mary Rhodes mind was spending a lifetime on an organ bench. But the priest at Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church in Anniston? Well, let's just say he had other ideas.

(00:23):
Two times I said, "No. Can't do it." So, the third time he called, I thought, Well, if I tell him I'm coming to help out for two weeks, then maybe that would satisfy them and I could move on with my life. And those two weeks will be 50 years next March.
Mary says now she thinks of it as God's plan for her life.
It's a calling to be a church musician. It really is, because the hours are not necessarily your hours. It's a lot of time that you're taking away from your family, because when people go on vacations or have family times, Christmas and Easter, guess where musicians are at Christmas and Easter? They're in church.

(00:58):
Even with arthritis in her hands and the hectic Christmas season here, Mary is not about to start slowing down. She says she views every note she plays as an opportunity to touch someone's heart.
I want them to come away with just a sense of how good it was to be in church, in the presence of God, this powerful moment - Christ being born. And that's when the music is so important that it leads them to that.

(01:25):
And with that as her guiding star, Mary says she's already planning to pull out all the stops for next year's services at Sacred Heart.
Some people say, Well, when do you think you may retire? And I start thinking about it. And I think if I retire, then what I play at home - it's so powerful to me - I will not have an opportunity to share it with people at church. And sometimes I think, I don't know if I ever want to quit.