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Wurlitzer, the view from her hilltop home is spectacular, and the hospitality was excellent. Margo, Dorothy, and Bob White put on some fine entertainment with Margo on the piano, Bob on the Wurlitzer and Dorothy on the Conn, all at the same time, playing the same piece more or less. We met twice at the Strand Theatre in Delaware to the entertainment of Tom Hamilton on the COTOS Conn. We also had a meeting at the Ohio Theatre where any one could try out the finest Robert Morton in these parts. Intimidating but fun. One meeting was held at Williams Music Store. Williams is the dealer for Allen Organs and Tom Hazelton was the featured artist. Again, anyone could try out the Allen Renaissance. Two meetings were held at Rick Devere's where we enjoyed the Morton duplicate that Tom Hamilton used to own. The Christmas meeting was especially fun. Lois Jean played. Although not a COTOS meeting, nine of us attended the Christmas party at Ralph Charles home in Sumerset. Ralph is now 101 years young and flies his own airplane (And what have you been doing lately?).

In the spring we were fortunate to have Barry Baker in concert, the only one last year. I hear it was well received and attended although I was in Oregon at the time struggling to entertain my self and Barb. While in Oregon I visited my old Navy base in Astoria where I spent 18 months helping to keep mothballed ships ready to ramble. Wish I hadn't gone back. The base looks like a junkyard and all of the ships we maintained so carefully were towed to Japan as scrap.

And now for the Future

It is easy enough (sometimes) to recall last year's events. Not so easy to see the future.

We of the board of directors have discussed ways to make our Wurlitzer more visible and accessible. These efforts will have to be addressed to the school administration as well as have the endorsement of the general membership to be successful. One idea is to place façade pipes either in front of or below the chamber grills. As it is now, the organ is not visible at all to the many people who attend other than organ concerts in the auditorium. Although concerts and publicity alerts some people to the installation, it should be obvious that after 25 years if there still are people including the students as well as staff, who are not aware of the organ, maybe we should try something else. (My computer just told me that the previous sentence was too long. Don't you hate it when that happens?) Making the console visible is more of a challenge as is making the organ more available but it is doable. It will be more doable after the relays are replaced with solid state relays. The relay room will then be practically empty except of course for the console. Opening up that wall to the auditorium so that the console would now be on view would be the ultimate in my opinion. I don't know how the school would react to that proposal but considering that they agreed to the installation in the first place, it doesn't seem so far fetched that they would allow an approach to make the organ more usable as well as visible.

The board of directors needs input from the members, positive or negative although I prefer the former. If more meetings should be at the school let us know. If the meetings need to have more variety in content let us know that too. I definitely see a need for additional members, not just for the sake of it but because there must be more people out there who would enjoy the theatre organ as much as we do. To me, the public concerts are a gold mine for new members simply because there are 300-500 people there for one purpose and that is at least part of the purpose of COTOS. There is more to it than saying in the brochure or program that we would like for you to join. More effort needs to go into it and one way would be to offer a one-year membership when buying two or more tickets or some such thing. Some present members might object to that concept so it will have to be done carefully. We certainly can't suffer any member losses just because something wasn't thought out carefully and discussed fully. Again, your input is important.

The problem, if can call it that, of not attracting younger people to the theatre organ is not peculiar to COTOS as all clubs have the same challenge. After 25 years of having the organ at the school with no   (continued on page 5)