Christine Benich, 97 and nearly blind, reluctantly says goodbye to playing pipe organ at Canoga Park Lutheran Church.
She takes the 21 steps up the narrow staircase to the balcony of Canoga Park Lutheran Church to perform one final song on the pipe organ she’s played almost every Sunday since the church opened in 1960.
Normally, she would arrange her sheet music on the stand in front of her, but there is none to be arranged anymore because Benich is going blind and can no longer read the notes. After 60 years, Christine Benich is stepping away from playing the organ at Canoga Park Lutheran Church. Times were hard and her parents saved what little they could to give their daughter piano lessons that came cheap from teachers just trying to make ends meet themselves.
The weather was cold in Chicago and both their parents moved west to Southern California for the warmer climate, and in 1955 Christine and her husband followed, moving to Woodland Hills. And, that’s how it began. That little organ soon became a big pipe organ when the new church was built, and Christine soon was doubling as director of the school choir and putting on programs for the growing congregation.Before her eyesight began to fail, she would look down from the balcony to a congregation that had gone from a high of almost 800 members in 1993 and a school with more than 200 students in it to a congregation of 180 members and no school.
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