It Took 5 Moving Vans--It Couldn’t Be a Pipe Dream

It took some intense shopping but Dick and Jane Loderhose finally found the Bay Theater in Seal Beach, just the right place for their massive Wurlitzer theater pipe organ. Then it required 14 years for them to install it, partly because he lived on the East Coast and commuted to oversee the installation.

Eventually they built a penthouse on top of the theater and moved in with the organ.

The Loderhoses operate the facility as a movie theater on a regular basis and hold monthly organ concerts, but the concerts are more as an entertainment outlet for the community than for profit.

“Dick was always fascinated by the Wurlitzer,” said his wife of 40 years. “It’s always been his hobby.”

Before making large amounts of money with his chemical business, Loderhose bought and sold theater organs. He calls his Seal Beach pipe organ “The Mighty Wurlitzer” and said it took five moving vans to truck it from New York to Seal Beach.

His Wurlitzer, regarded as the world’s second largest theater organ, next to one in Radio City Music Hall in New York, has four keyboards and can create the sound of a full orchestra including piano, marimba, saxophone, cymbals, five kinds of drums and 61 brass trumpets.

It can even make the sound of a running horse.

The organ uses 4,000 pipes, one 16 feet long and some no bigger than a pencil.

The pipes are installed under and in back of the theater and a separate air-conditioning system keeps the temperature at 72 degrees.

Three hundred of the theater’s 700 seats were removed to accommodate the pipes.

“You couldn’t duplicate this one for half a million dollars,” said Dick Loderhose, who relishes playing the organ for visitors. Although accomplished, he contracts with others to perform at monthly concerts at the movie house, some playing while silent movies are shown.

“We don’t expect we’ll ever make a profit from the concerts,” he said, believing instead that he needs to preserve the sound of the theater pipe organ. “Some people have never heard theater organ music. They should.”

Although the Wurlitzer organs were built for theaters during the silent movie era, “jazz bands, pop singers and rock bands have told us they’d get a kick out of performing with the organ,” he said. “Can you imagine those combinations?”

When they bought the nostalgic, arty theater, which now plays first-run movies on their second time around, “we wanted to maintain the theater’s past as a nice, homey place to go,” he said.

He and his wife want the kind of atmosphere “where you can have a good time looking at silent and modern movies, have sing-alongs and guest artists. I think we’ve done that.”

Being ranked ninth doesn’t sound so terrific. But it’s not bad when it’s for the entire state.

“Donny (Bridgman) felt great when he got word of his ranking,” said his father, Bruce Bridgman of Costa Mesa, after results of a statewide ski speed race competition by age groups were announced. “Needless to say I was ecstatic.”

Donny is only 9 years old.

Oscar Villalvazo, 72, retired in 1980 after working 20 years for Connell Chevrolet in Costa Mesa and much of his earlier life for other new car agencies selling and tuning up automobiles.

So it’s no mystery why Villalvazo, of Tustin, feels comfortable there after retirement. He spends half of every day at the agency as a sort of public relations person.

And Villalvazo uses the time to good purpose. He organizes blood donation programs, helps with the March of Dimes fund drive, United Way and individual families that need help.

“The car agency is really community minded,” he said, pointing out that he doesn’t accept any pay. “They wanted to pay me, but I said no,” he said. “That way I’m not obligated to them. “I go when I want to go.”

And “go” means bowling five days a week and golfing on Saturday.

“I like to keep busy,” he said. “Besides, I’m really healthy.”

Acknowledgments--Mike Ryerson of Tustin, who on July 5 awoke and saved two women from their flame-engulfed Tustin home and alerted neighbors of the fire danger to them, has received the Medal of Honor award from the California Reserve Police Officers Assn. Ryerson is a banker by day and reserve officer at night.