Organist With Her Clients to the End

Gladys Kaylor has attended more than 10,000 funerals in the last 50 years. It is not that she likes them--it is her job.

As the organist at the Bisch & Son Funeral Home, she has played everything from standard hymns to Simon and Garfunkel to “Stardust.” She has played at funeral services along with violinists, choruses and the Shrine Clown Band.

Though 95% of the families want hymns, Kaylor is always willing to bend, since the family chooses the music it feels is appropriate.

“I’m thinking of pleasing the family most of all,” Kaylor said. “I’m trying to play the type of music that will satisfy them.”

During the heyday of the Beatles, she got lots of requests for “Let It Be.” But she started playing funerals many years before anyone had heard of the Beatles.

275 Funerals a Year

In 1936, Kaylor was organist at Grace Lutheran Church, where the Bisch family were members. Harold Bisch asked her to play for a funeral. One funeral has led to at least 10,000, since she averages about 275 funerals a year.

When she started, people rarely had funeral services in a funeral home. But that is changing, and it is making her job a hectic one.

Most of the time she plays at services for people she never knew, and she prefers it that way. Kaylor said it usually doesn’t affect her playing, but when she played at the funeral of a close neighbor, she was thinking about more than her music.

“That was hard,” she said. “I’d rather play for people I don’t know, but as I get older, it’s more people my age, people I’ve known.”

By now, there aren’t many hymns she doesn’t know. Some of the most popular are “How Great Thou Art,” “Just a Closer Walk With Thee,” “Blessed Assurance” and “Lift High the Cross.”

But if the family asks for something she doesn’t know, she may spend a lot of time on the phone to a music store or organist friends to try to find the sheet music.

Scotty Meredith, an employee of Bisch, said Kaylor has a feel for the organ that few others can duplicate.

“On occasion,” he said, “we have different organists, and we can tell. The love isn’t there like it is with Gladys. She plays with a lot of feeling.”