Eugene man realizes life's dream by crafting a wooden pipe organ.

Byline: Bob Keefer The Register-Guard

Many middle-age people dream of quitting their jobs to pursue unlikely artistic dreams. Five years ago, David Petty stopped dreaming and took the plunge.

His dream is building pipe organs.

Petty - who already had a wife and two children at the time - walked away from a corporate job selling plastics in South America, moved his family to Eugene and went to work as a beginner in John Brombaugh's Glenwood organ shop.

Petty hammered lead pipes, swept the floor and learned the intricate, centuries-old craft of pipe organ construction from an internationally known master organ builder - all while being paid $9 an hour.

Today, somewhat to his surprise, he's landed on his feet.

Now 47, Petty has completed his first organ - Opus 1 is the formal name, but Petty calls it "Barely," as in barely made it. And he has just received a commission to build his first church organ, a portable pipe organ for Eugene's First United Methodist Church, where his wife, Julia Brown, is organist and music director.

"I've been an organ freak for 40 years," he says. "And it's always been my goal to build my own organs."

Petty works in a 700-square-foot shop at his home in south Eugene that's packed with hand woodworking tools, raw hardwood planks and power milling equipment, including a precision metal lathe he uses to turn out wooden parts to fine tolerances.

Right now, Petty says, he can build only wooden pipes. He would need a larger shop - and one in an industrial zone - to melt and form the lead alloys used to make metal pipes.

Like Brombaugh, who recently announced at the age of 67 that he is closing his shop after he finishes the last two organs of his career, Petty wants to build tracker organs in the style of fine European instruments of centuries past.

Tracker organs are fully mechanical in their keyboard action and are more responsive to the touch than electrically controlled organs; the old-fashioned organs work through a series of wooden linkages that connect their keyboards to valves allowing air to the pipes.

There are about 200 pipe organ manufacturing shops in the United States, including one-person shops and large, factory-style operations, Petty says; about 30 to 40 of them produce tracker organs.

Petty was born in Texas and grew up in a musical family. He studied chemical engineering at the University of Missouri and later worked for Dow Chemical.

He met Brown in 1990 in Chicago, where she was a music student at Northwestern University. They moved to South America on a business assignment for his job, which largely involved sales of plastic film for food packaging.

It was there he wrestled with the decision to abandon corporate life in favor of working with his hands.

"I started rethinking my life," he says. "I was saying, `Wait a minute. Organs could be a lot of fun.' But there was a lot of social reinforcement to be a corporate guy and make a lot of money."

By 1998, he was thinking about organs all the time. "My wife and I talked and talked and talked about it," he says.

Brown did her own research and recommended her husband try to find work at Brombaugh's shop. He wrote to Brombaugh, was hired, and the couple moved to Eugene in 1999. He worked at the shop for 4 1/2 years.

Opus 1, which has a 51-note keyboard and just one rank of pipes, took him seven months to complete. Opus 2a, for the Methodist church, is literally on the drawing board right now and is due for completion in November 2005. The $50,000 commission for the organ resulted from an anonymous donation to the church, Petty says.

Petty plans to build three more organs - designated 2b, 2c and 2d - from the same plans. He's looking for buyers.

Brombaugh declines to discuss his former employee, but says he's a big fan of Brown's playing. "She is one of the most incredible musicians I have ever heard play," he says.

For his part, Petty calls Brombaugh "demanding" and leaves it at that.

Petty is philosophical about starting a difficult new career late in life.

"I'm 47," he says. "Maybe I'll build 10 organs over the rest of my life. Maybe 15. It doesn't matter. I still want every single one to reflect all the training I've had."

So what will be the distinctive trait of a Petty organ?

"The personality," Petty says firmly. Then he elaborates. "Organs all have personalities. An organ is cold or warm, or distant or close or in your face.

`What will be the personality of my organs? It's too early to say."

CAPTION(S):

David Petty assembles the components of his very first church organ, the portable Opus 2, which he plans to deliver next year to the First United Methodist Church in Eugene.