William “Bill” De Turk dead at 78

William "Bill" De Turk

William “Bill” De Turk died March 14. Born May 15, 1945, in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, area, he earned his Bachelor of Music degree cum honore from Heidelberg University, Tiffin, Ohio, in 1967, and his Master of Music degree in organ performance from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1969. While at Michigan he studied carillon with Percival Price. In 1974 De Turk was the first carillon scholar at the Bok Singing Tower, Lake Wales, Florida, working with Milford Myhre for one year. As university carillonneur for the University of Michigan between 1981 and 1987, he hosted the 1986 World Carillon Congress. He also served as director of music (organist, choirmaster, and carillonneur) at Grosse Pointe Memorial Church, Grosse Pointe, Michigan, between 1977 and 1993.

De Turk moved to Florida in 1993 to become assistant carillonneur and librarian at Bok Tower Gardens and was appointed carillonneur there in 2004, following the retirement of Myhre. De Turk retired from the Bok Tower in 2011 but remained active in the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America (GCNA). Over decades his roles included service as president between 1979 and 1984, archivist from 1972 until 2009, and as an adjudicator for both the examination and Barnes juries. He performed recitals throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe, and his interest in research in the field of carillons and bells resulted in 11 published articles. In 1983 he was awarded the Berkeley Medal by the University of California at Berkeley for distinguished service to the carillon. In 2000 he was honored for his contribution to the art of the carillon at the 12th World Carillon Federation Congress/39th International Carillon Festival in Springfield, Illinois. In 2012 he was named an honorary member in the GCNA.

James Elwin McCray

James Elwin McCray, music professor and administrator, choral conductor, and composer, died March 3 at his home in Fort Collins, Colorado, following a period of declining health. He was born February 27, 1938, in Kankakee, Illinois, and received degrees from Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington, and Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He earned a Ph.D. degree in music from the University of Iowa, Iowa City. Before arriving in Fort Collins, he was a member of the music faculty of the University of South Florida, Tampa, and chairman of the music departments at Longwood College, Farmville, Virginia, and St. Mary’s College, South Bend, Indiana. From 1978 until 1988 he was chairman of the department of music, theatre, and dance at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, from which he retired as Professor Emeritus of Music.

McCray composed and published over one hundred choral compositions that were sung by vocal ensembles in public schools, churches, and universities—many of them commissioned by these organizations. He received professor of the year awards from the honor societies of two universities, was awarded the Mellon Prize for distinguished contributions to scholarship, and was recognized for excellence in teaching by the Colorado State Alumni Board. An active church musician, he served Protestant and Catholic churches for decades. Additionally, he conducted Laudamus, a civic choral ensemble, and authored three books and numerous professional articles. From November 1976 through December 2016, he wrote a monthly column for The Diapason, “Music for Voices and Organ,” reviewing new choral music and reintroducing other anthems appropriate throughout the liturgical year.

As a university administrator, McCray was a leader who planned for the future and found innovative solutions to the changing climate of higher education. He was a strong and vigorous advocate for his departments and worked to broaden his departments’ reputation. A particular asset of his leadership and community building was his continuing success at hosting distinguished musicians, scholars, and composers from around the country to interact with students and frequent, gracious entertaining of the Fort Collins choral community at his home.

James Elwin McCray is survived by his wife, Joanne Campbell, and his children by his previous wife, Chris: son Matthew McCray of Los Angeles and daughter Kelly McCray of Tampa; and step-children Emily Lefler of San Diego, Bradley Lefler of Los Angeles, and predeceased by his stepson, Scott Lefler. A celebration of life was held April 6 in Fort Collins. Memorial gifts should be directed to the future James E. McCray Music Scholarship, which the family hopes to eventually endow to support conducting students in the CSU Department of Music. Checks should be made payable to the Colorado State University Foundation, Post Office Box 1870, Fort Collins, Colorado 80522, or made online at advancing.colostate.edu/give.

Robert D. Rhoads

Robert D. Rhoads, 88, retired vice president and technical director of Schoenstein & Co., Benicia, California, died February 10 in Sonoma, California. Born in Burbank, California, his family moved to a farm in Sunnyside, Washington. Rhoads attended Simpson College in Washington and assisted in relocating the college to San Francisco. Part of that project was installing two campus pipe organs. In San Francisco he earned an AA in electrical engineering from Cogswell College while working on installation and maintenance of industrial boilers.

In 1960 he started Robert D. Rhoads Pipe Organ Service. The following year he became an M. P. Möller representative, selling, installing, and servicing organs in the Northern California area. In 1970 he returned to Simpson College as head of maintenance and engineer of their radio station. When offered an opportunity to plan and install radio studio equipment and transmitters throughout the country, he became chief engineer of Family Radio, a national religious network.

After completing the radio broadcasting project in 1974, Rhoads again entered the organ business. He purchased a building and set up an organ shop, employing two full-time people besides his wife, Dolores. During the “pizza organ” craze, the firm renovated and installed many Wurlitzer organs.

In 1978 Rhoads Pipe Organ Service was purchased by Schoenstein & Co. Robert Rhoads became factory manager, and Dolores Rhoads manager of tuning service. Robert Rhoads was responsible for developing and refining the designs of nearly every component of the Schoenstein electric-pneumatic action system. He coordinated the engineering, production, and installation of all new organs as well as major rebuilding jobs. Some of his notable projects at Schoenstein were organs at St. Paul’s Parish, Washington, D.C., and First-Plymouth Congregational Church, Lincoln, Nebraska. He also supervised the restoration of the Mormon Tabernacle organ in Salt Lake City, Utah, and accomplished installing the façade of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Conference Center organ in Salt Lake City while the building was under construction.

In 1996 Rhoads was named vice president and technical director of Schoenstein & Co. In April 2003 he retired after 24 years of service. Robert D. Rhoads is survived by his wife Dolores, two children, and seven grandchildren.

James Wyly

James Wyly died October 15, 2023, in Oaxaca, Mexico. He was born November 15, 1937, in Kansas City, Missouri, and was educated in public schools. He graduated in 1959 from Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts, where he majored in English and studied organ at nearby Smith College with Henry Mishkin. He then enrolled in the new Doctor of Musical Arts degree program at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, earning his degree in 1964. From 1961 through 1963 he was supported by the Fulbright Commission for his research and dissertation on historic pipe organs of Spain, living in Madrid. He was prepared to teach organ, harpsichord, music theory, and music history.

Wyly taught on the music faculty of Elmhurst College, Elmhurst, Illinois, from 1964 to 1968. Then he served on the music faculty of Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa, from 1968 to 1976, where he also taught in a humanities program based in classical literature.

In Chicago he met and married Mary Gae Porter, who served as a librarian at Grinnell and later at Chicago’s Newberry Library. From 1977 through 1985 James Wyly devoted himself to the study of clinical psychology and the analytical psychology of Carl Jung. He earned his PsyD degree from the Illinois School of Professional Psychology in 1981 and his diploma in analytical psychology from Chicago’s Jung Institute. He maintained a private practice in Chicago from 1981 until 2003, also serving on the staff of Fourth Presbyterian Church’s Replogle Counseling Center. He was an active teacher in the training programs of the Jung Institute until 1997.

In the 1990s Wyly worked with several groups of psychologists in Mexico City, people who wanted to study Jungian psychology and become analysts. He taught classes and provided clinical supervision for candidates.

In 2000 Wyly met paintings conservator Helen Oh, who taught painting at the Palette and Chisel Academy in Chicago, and he studied with her until 2003, learning 17th-century techniques. James and Mary Wyly moved to Oaxaca, Mexico, in 2003, first living in a 17th-century house of the late painter Rodolfo Morales. In 2008 they moved into the house of architect Guillermo de la Cajiga, where he pursued his passion in the studio of his dreams. At the same time a group of musicians gathered around him to learn and perform music of the Baroque era. The Wylys hosted two or three concerts a year until 2023.

In 2010 James Wyly was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Treatment provided by two young physicians using alternative medicine delayed symptoms until the summer of 2023 when they cured the leukemia but could not reverse the anemia that followed. Mary, these doctors, and a loyal circle of friends cared for him until he died peacefully in his bed.

Franklin Ashdown

Franklin Ashdown, physician, organist, and composer, died January 30 in El Paso, Texas. Born May 2, 1942, in Logan, Utah, he started playing the piano at an early age and was called to be the organist for his ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at age 13. After his family moved to Lubbock, Texas, he began organ studies with Judson Maynard. He completed his undergraduate work at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, where he sang in the concert choir. Pursuing his passion for medicine, he attended Southwestern Medical School of the University of Texas in Dallas. He was in Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas when President John F. Kennedy was shot and brought into the emergency room, where Ashdown was recruited to be a liaison between reporters and doctors.

Ashdown spent his medical residency in Salt Lake City, and he spoke later of the great influence Tabernacle Organist Alexander Schreiner had on him. He felt that the signature sound of the Tabernacle organ and the sonorities Schreiner was able to exploit in his improvisations greatly affected his writing. Ashdown also studied organ in Utah with James Drake, who encouraged him to begin composing.  

This was also the time of the Vietnam War, and Ashdown was able to defer being drafted until he completed his medical training. In order to fulfill his military obligations, he was assigned as a doctor to Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo, New Mexico, in 1971. He started his own medical practice as an internist in 1973, serving as physician in Alamogordo until his retirement in 2008.

For many years Ashdown was organist and choir director at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Alamogordo. Even during his busy medical years, he was composing. Upon his retirement, he was able to focus his full-time attention on composing organ and choral works. His organ works include many hymn and folk tune arrangements and also numerous original concert works. Over his career he had published more than 250 pieces for solo organ, at least 30 collections of organ music, 15 works for organ with other instruments, and 50 choral works with Augsburg Fortress, Concordia Publishing House, Gentry Publications, GIA Publications, H. W. Gray, Wayne Leupold Editions, Lorenz, MorningStar Music Publishers, Neil Kjos Co., Oregon Catholic Press, The Organist’s Companion, Oxford University Press, Paraclete Press, Sacred Music Press, and Zimbel Press.  

His works were performed in venues such as Grace Cathedral, San Francisco; The Tabernacle at Temple Square, Salt Lake City; St. Paul’s Cathedral, London; and Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris. They have also been featured on American Public Radio’s Pipedreams, National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, and the Tabernacle Choir’s weekly broadcast Music and the Spoken Word.

Franklin Ashdown is survived by six siblings as well as 27 nieces and nephews and 101 great-nieces and nephews. Services were held February 4 at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Alamogordo.

Margo Halsted

Margo Halsted died February 22. Born Margo Armbruster on April 24, 1938, in Bakersfield, California, she was first introduced to the carillon as an undergraduate student at Stanford University. From Stanford she earned a bachelor’s degree in music (1960) and a master’s degree in education (1965). In 1975 she earned a Master of Music degree from the University of California Riverside. Halsted passed the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America (GCNA) carillonneur examination at the 1967 congress in Ottawa, Canada, and earned a diploma from the Netherlands Carillon School, Amersfoort, in 1981. She was active within the GCNA over many years, serving as assistant secretary, a member of the board of directors, chair of several committees, and editor of the guild’s newsletter. Halsted was awarded honorary membership in the GCNA and twice received the GCNA’s Certificate for Exceptional Service. She was also awarded the University of California Berkeley Medal, Bell and Citation Awards from the World Carillon Federation, and was an honorary member of the Belgian Carillon School, Mechelen.

Over the course of her career, Halsted served as associate carillonneur for Stanford University, 1967–1977; lecturer, university organist, and carillonist for University of California Riverside, 1977–1987; assistant professor and later associate professor at the University of Michigan, 1987–2003; with additional service at Michigan State University and University of California Santa Barbara, teaching more than 200 students to play the carillon. At the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, she taught and performed on the university’s two carillons in the only master’s degree program for carillon in the United States. She was named Associate Professor Emerita in 2003.

Halsted concertized around the world, consulted for carillon projects in the United States and abroad, and lectured/presented at five World Carillon Federation conventions. She composed music for the carillon and published numerous articles about the instrument and served as contributing editor for the carillon for The Diapason from 1981 until 1991.

Margo Halsted was preceded in death by two weeks by her husband Peter LeSourd. Memorial gifts for may be made to the Armbruster Fund, an endowment that she started to benefit the University of Michigan’s carillon program (https://donate.umich.edu/XVjKB).

Jan Reagan Rowland

Jan Reagan Rowland died January 18 in Houston, Texas. He was born in Beaumont, Texas, in 1944, attended local schools there, and enrolled at Lamar University in Beaumont, where he studied electrical engineering and enrolled in German language classes. He completed two years of study before being called into the United States Army and serving from 1966 to 1968, where his expertise in speaking German earned him an assignment in Munich, Germany. It was there that he met his future wife, Hanne, and they were married in Berlin in 1969.

As his tour of duty in the army was nearing its end, the United States representative for E. F. Walcker & Cie. of Ludwigsburg, Germany, suggested that Rowland take a job at Walcker so that he could become more useful as a skilled organ installer once he returned to the United States. Rowland worked at Walcker for 35 days in July and August of 1968, then returned to the United States, where two Walcker jobs awaited installation: one in Michigan, the other at Colby College, Waterville, Maine. While in Waterville, Rowland learned of another installation happening at the First Congregational Church in the same town and made a visit to the church, where he met David W. Cogswell, the owner/president of Berkshire Organ Company. Cogswell telephoned Rowland early in 1969 with an offer of a job as factory manager of Berkshire, which Rowland accepted, and within a couple of months he was named executive vice president.

Discussions between Rowland, Cogswell, and others about the costs of travel to Europe to meet with organbuilders germinated the idea of an organization of organ building individuals, not companies, and resulted in a convention with no title in Washington, D.C. That gathering in 1973 became the founding of the American Institute of Organbuilders. As an attendee of that convention, Rowland was considered a co-founder of the organization and was designated a charter member.

Later in 1973, concerned about the slow growth of the Berkshire Organ Company, Rowland decided to form his own company with Pieter Visser, who was hired by Berkshire only four months earlier. Houston, Texas, was chosen as the site for the new company, Visser-Rowland Associates.

The company grew as Houston expanded in the 1970s and 1980s, with oil companies creating more jobs and with more churches being built. For the next eleven years, Visser-Rowland built dozens of pipe organs for sites from Maine to California. One of the last instruments before Rowland’s retirement from the firm was built for Bates Recital Hall at the University of Texas at Austin. At the time, it was the largest mechanical-action organ pipe organ built by a United States firm, having 67 stops.

Rowland was accepted into membership of the International Society of Organ Builders in 1984, and he became a member of the editorial board of the society’s information trade journal, for which he wrote articles on various organbuilding techniques. He often translated articles and speeches of other organbuilders from German into English. He was invited to Europe over two dozen times to the annual International Society of Organbuilders congresses due to his expertise.

In 1984 Rowland started his own shop producing custom drawknobs for many organbuilders in America, Europe, and Japan. However, his real enjoyment came from designing and building special tools and machines for different organbuilders, tools and machines that could not be bought elsewhere.

Rowland was perhaps best known for his intelligence and ability to imagine, invent, and make things work better and more efficiently. He was internationally respected for his designing of a computerized lathe for completing tasks such as shaping drawknobs for pipe organs. This enabled pipe organ builders to cut costs enormously by reducing labor and time, making tens of thousands of hours of tedium and templates obsolete through his inventions. Rowland constructed some of these computerized systems for pipe organ companies in Europe, filling the cargo hold on a plane to ship the devices overseas.

Rowland enjoyed attending the American Institute of Organbuilders convention every year with his wife, Hanne. He was proud that the AIO stayed in business and attracted and taught organbuilders to help each other and keep organbuilding an interesting and unusual business.

Jan Reagan Rowland is survived by Hanne, his wife of 54 years, of Houston, and a sister Karen Rowland Richardson and her husband Ronnie of Beaumont, Texas. A military burial with full honors was held at the Houston National Cemetery on January 30.

—Hanne Rowland

Karen Rowland Richardson

Christopher Lavoie