A Find a Grave member for over seven and a half years, Dale added two thousand, eight-hundred memorial pages to the site, and was long active in Family History work in general. Dale was around five or six years old when his parents bought him a very small (as in fit on a kid's lap) electric organ. It was hardly more than a toy, and they probably figured it would be broken in a short time. It wasn't. Dale had bigger and better plans than that. On that tiny organ, and through a lifelong procession of ever larger ones, he taught himself to play and read music. By the time he was a teen, he was an extremely accomplished semi-profession organist and pianist. He loved the big pipe-organs, and perhaps the pinnacle of his career was the day he was invited to play the monster organ in the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, Utah. He was an alumnus of Ferris University in Big Rapids, Michigan, with a major in Accounting, and a minor in English. Dale was a member and treasurer for many years of the Southern Chapter of The Arizona Theater Organ Society, and also had a long-standing professional gig as organist for the Tucson American Evangelical Lutheran Church on Broadway Ave., and Tucson Blvd., in Tucson, Arizona. When membership of the Church dropped and they couldn't afford to pay him anymore, Dale just kept right on playing anyway . . . for free. Dale died suddenly and unexpectedly on Valentines Day, Saturday, February 14th, 2015, at his home in Tucson. He was working at his desk and was found later in the day by a friend, still sitting in his desk-chair, the victim of an apparent heart-attack or stroke. He passed very quickly, facing a wall montage of treasured family photos . . . most of whom had already passed through the veil years before. We like to think that those faces were the last thing he saw in this life, and the first he saw in the next. Dale was much loved. A somewhat and sometimes grumpy old-guy, he had a keen intellect and a heart of gold. He loved his fellow-men, and he loved the Lord. Dale's body was cremated, and the remains scattered in his beloved Santa Rita Mountains by his brother Larry, on Sunday morning, the 22nd of February, 2015, per Dale's own wishes. Home now with his God, and with those he loved so well, he will be remembered and missed forever by those whose lives he touched, with both his music and his heart. Farewell Dale . . . until we meet again.
A Find a Grave member for over seven and a half years, Dale added two thousand, eight-hundred memorial pages to the site, and was long active in Family History work in general. Dale was around five or six years old when his parents bought him a very small (as in fit on a kid's lap) electric organ. It was hardly more than a toy, and they probably figured it would be broken in a short time. It wasn't. Dale had bigger and better plans than that. On that tiny organ, and through a lifelong procession of ever larger ones, he taught himself to play and read music. By the time he was a teen, he was an extremely accomplished semi-profession organist and pianist. He loved the big pipe-organs, and perhaps the pinnacle of his career was the day he was invited to play the monster organ in the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, Utah. He was an alumnus of Ferris University in Big Rapids, Michigan, with a major in Accounting, and a minor in English. Dale was a member and treasurer for many years of the Southern Chapter of The Arizona Theater Organ Society, and also had a long-standing professional gig as organist for the Tucson American Evangelical Lutheran Church on Broadway Ave., and Tucson Blvd., in Tucson, Arizona. When membership of the Church dropped and they couldn't afford to pay him anymore, Dale just kept right on playing anyway . . . for free. Dale died suddenly and unexpectedly on Valentines Day, Saturday, February 14th, 2015, at his home in Tucson. He was working at his desk and was found later in the day by a friend, still sitting in his desk-chair, the victim of an apparent heart-attack or stroke. He passed very quickly, facing a wall montage of treasured family photos . . . most of whom had already passed through the veil years before. We like to think that those faces were the last thing he saw in this life, and the first he saw in the next. Dale was much loved. A somewhat and sometimes grumpy old-guy, he had a keen intellect and a heart of gold. He loved his fellow-men, and he loved the Lord. Dale's body was cremated, and the remains scattered in his beloved Santa Rita Mountains by his brother Larry, on Sunday morning, the 22nd of February, 2015, per Dale's own wishes. Home now with his God, and with those he loved so well, he will be remembered and missed forever by those whose lives he touched, with both his music and his heart. Farewell Dale . . . until we meet again.
