Kennedy: Trenton, Georgia, man pulls out all the stops to make world

Aug 31, 2023

One day 20 years ago, Andy Wishart, of Leeds, England, stood atop Lookout Mountain and contemplated the city of Chattanooga down below.

The question on his mind: "Do I want to make this my home?"

A pipe organ-builder by craft, Wishart had reached his mid-30s and was being recruited to work here by Richards, Fowkes & Co. in Ooltewah, a small, 10-person company that makes multi-million dollar pipe organs.

Wishart hoped the view from Point Park on Lookout would inspire him and perhaps help him decide what to do.

"I had to make that decision looking down, whether I would come and make a life here," he said. "And I did."

Wishart is one of perhaps a few dozen organ-builders worldwide who can meticulously shape metal and wood pipes for grand mechanical keyboard instruments that can take years to build and months to tune.

The massive pipe organs can trigger a thunderous exhalation of sound that ignites fervor in the righteous and awe in agnostics.

In religious settings they are like the lungs of God.

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As a teenager growing up in England, Wishart had been steered by his father into becoming an apprentice at the F.J. Rogers organ company. Millions of English citizens were unemployed in 1984, and Wishart's dad wanted him to learn a craft.

Wishart said his first job at the organ company was fetching sandwiches for the other workers, but slowly he began learning the difficult task of making pipes for organs, many of which were exported to the United States.

Large organs contain several thousands pipes, Wishart said in an interview last week, and each pipe is cast from metal ingots and then molded and soldered into tubing up to 10 inches in diameter. Some of the bass pipes are up to 16 feet long.

The metal itself is primarily composed of lead and tin, Wishart said, with the ratio customized to produced a desired tone: more tin for brighter tones, more lead for mellow, flute-like sounds.

Crafting the shape and thickness of the metal pipes is the the work of pipe-makers such as Wishart who uses planes and special tools perfected over generations. The fact that all the work is done by hand is the reason pipe organs are so expensive, he said.

The process of funding, building and installing a new pipe organ can take a decade, Wishart said. Tuning a new organ alone can take months.

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When he was in his early 30s, Wishart was sent to America by his English employers to staff an organ-builders convention in Atlanta. Word of his pipe-making skills had preceded him, and he was quickly offered jobs by several American organ companies.

"Because I knew all the organ builders we supplied (in the U.S.), I was offered four jobs in five days," Wishart said.

About the same time, Wishart was given the opportunity to buy his company in England, but he ultimately decided the share price was too high.

Later, while on a vacation in Florida, Wishart accepted an invitation from the owners of the Richards, Fowkes & Co. to come up to Chattanooga and consider their job offer.

By the time he arrived back in England, his decision was made.

He told the organ company owner there: "I don't want to buy the company; and by the way, in three weeks I'm moving to America."

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In Chattanooga, Wishart settled into a middle-class life. (He later would become a successful soccer coach and one of the founders of the CFC youth academy.)

The organ-building work in Ooltewah was steady. When they aren't building a new organ, the crew repairs organs at churches and universities around America.

The organs made here are mechanical, save for the electric blowers that push air through the pipes. They are hand built, fully assembled and tested in Ooltewah before being taken apart and transported to their destinations on big trucks.

About 18 months into his work here, Wishart was denied an extention to his work visa. All of the open slots had been taken by medical professionals, he said.

His only option was to apply for a higher category of visa that recognizes people with special skills. Quickly, Wishart pulled together photos from many of the organs in America he had helped to build, along with letters of endorsement. One of the letters, from Emory University in Atlanta, was backed by former president Jimmy Carter.

His application was approved.

"I'm the only (foreign born) organ-builder in American to be accepted under exceptional circumstances," he said.

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Now, at age 55, Wishart is teaching young apprentices how to carry on the art of organ building. The fact that he has 40 years experience — 20 in England and 20 here — is remarkable for a person his age.

"I'll try and go as long as I can," he said.

Sometimes, when a new organ is delivered and assembled, Wishart said he feels a deep sense of satisfaction.

He tells people to stand at the back of the church to view a new organ so they can appreciate its full grandeur.

"When you see people's faces light up, you can tell them how you built it," he said. "You get a little bit of a thrill from that."

Life Stories is published on Mondays. Contact Mark Kennedy at [email protected] or 423-757-6645.