White Lake — Aaron Kaleniecki was just messing around in Photoshop one day, daydreaming about what St. Patrick Parish in White Lake might look like with a reimagined sanctuary.

The new parish music director at the time, Kaleniecki wanted to move the church’s 1968 Casavant pipe organ from its location off in the corner to a more prominent place behind the altar, so he grabbed an image of an organ off Google to crop into the shot.

Then, Fr. Tom Meagher walked in.

“I don’t remember where I got the image of the pipe organ façade off Google, but he took one look at it and said, ‘Yeah, that’s what I want to do,’” Kaleniecki said. “So that’s how it all got started, as funny as it sounds.”

Fast forward almost three years later, and St. Patrick Parish and Fr. Meagher got far more than they bargained for, with two “new” pipe organs with almost 160 years of history between them.

On Nov. 26, the parish debuted the pair of “rescued” 1930s-era Kilgens with a dedication and concert marking the culmination of more than a year’s worth of research, fundraising and dreaming.

“It’s far beyond any expectations or dreams I’ve had. I always had a dream that someday we’d be able to have the organ in the right place where it should have been originally,” said Fr. Meagher, pastor of St. Patrick since 1987.

Finding just one of the instruments was a task in itself, but finding two was a blessing from God.

For more than 80 years, the bigger of the two organs lived at St. Benedict Church in Highland Park, which closed in 2013.

When the church was sold to Soul Harvest Ministries, the new owners had no need of the organ, and the Archdiocese of Detroit began looking for a new home for the set of pipes.

After learning of the instrument’s availability, Fr. Meagher and Kaleniecki jumped at the opportunity.

“The archdiocese’s properties office told us that if we wanted to get it out of there, it was ours. So we went over and took a look at it, and as soon as we heard it, we all said, ‘Wow, this is what we want to do,’” Kaleniecki said.

Though the project started with the simple idea of moving the Casavant out of the corner, circumstances changed when the parish discovered the hidden gem at St. Benedict.

“It’s very stylistically different from the organ we had,” Kaleniecki said. “The instrument we had was a very typical instrument from the later ‘60s, very bright and articulate. It’s a fine instrument in some applications, but given where it was in our sanctuary and where it spoke from and the fact that the choir literally sat right in front of it, all of these reasons are why we started seriously considering replacing it.”

After making the decision to repurpose the St. Benedict organ, complete with its old oak growth wood, the parish still needed something to cover the space where the Casavant sat.

After posting a video on YouTube about the St. Benedict organ, Kaleniecki received a message from a “self-proclaimed Kilgen expert” who alerted him about the availability of another 1930s Kilgen from a closed parish in the Boston area.

“It worked out great because the organ in Boston was built by Kilgen only three or four years later, but was built as a very small accompaniment organ for a balcony, and it was the perfect fit for what we needed,” Kaleniecki said.

Kaleniecki and the team from Covenant Organs, which helped with the restoration of both instruments, drove the 16 hours to Boston and spent a full day dismantling and loading it into a 27-foot truck for the drive back to Michigan, where it was repurposed.

“We basically took that entire organ as it sat and made that our choir accompaniment division and the rest of the main organ from St. Benedict lives as it always had, erected in two cases on either side of the altar,” Kaleniecki said. “They work positively fantastic together.”

While the organs need time to settle into the new space, the rare combination of two vintage instruments gives St. Patrick a wealth of musical breadth, Kaleniecki said.

“It gives us a little bit more flavor to play with, more ingredients in the kitchen, if you will,” Kaleniecki said.

The musical transformation was complete when the parish found a set of chimes from a Congregational church in Grand Rapids and a set of en chamade pipes to install in the back of the church, which Fr. Meagher called a “really exceptional” part of the installation.

“Instead of being done in silver, they were done in a burnt copper, so it reflects the pastel shades of the rainbow. It’s a beautiful piece of art,” Fr. Meagher said.

At first, people were concerned the new sound would “blast people right out of their seats,” Fr. Meagher said, “but as Rick (Helderop, owner of Covenant Organs) explained, ‘the sound should wash over you and embrace you, not attack you.’”



The “new” organs might qualify as antiques, but to Kaleniecki and Fr. Meagher, that’s perfect. The 1920s and ‘30s are considered the “golden era” of pipe organ building in the United States, Kaleniecki said.

“Because a lot of the materials they used back then are simply not available or safe to work with, it’s gotten difficult for organ builders to recreate that sound using new wood and new metals,” Kaleniecki said. “Some have been reasonably successful, but when you play an organ from the ‘20s or ‘30s with a complete complement of stops, it just has a very unique, warm sound to it that hasn’t been duplicated in 50 years in a new instrument.”

Restoring and installing both instruments cost $370,000 — all of which was raised by the parish — as opposed to at least $1 million to build a new organ.

While the new sound is fantastic, the parish’s Casavant still has a lot of life left in it, too, Fr. Meagher said.

“We saved a very fine instrument from destruction, and because we had received these as gifts, we thought it was only right that the Casavant be offered to another parish that could also benefit from a very fine instrument,” Fr. Meagher said.

While Fr. Meagher declined to name the parish, which is near St. Patrick, he said the pastor is grateful for the offer and is deciding whether to take on the project.

Restoring old pipe organs is a way to keep alive the legacy of historic city churches, Fr. Meagher said, adding there are “around 400 good pipe organs in the United States right now looking for homes.”

“As long as people are willing to put the dedication into it and the willingness to pay for it — it’s something that’s disappearing really fast because other kinds of instruments are replacing it with electronics,” Fr. Meagher said. “A parish could certainly have a fine electronic instrument, but it’s just not the same as the actual pipes. The pipes take on a life of their own. They breathe.”