Accordionist, 85, Is Instrumental in Bringing Joy to Lives of Others

They had to strap Guenther Dalichau into his accordion the way an astronaut gets strapped into his spacesuit, but when his fingers hit the keys, the room shook with “The Pennsylvania Polka.”

At 85, he couldn’t see the two dozen elderly fans sitting rapt on metal chairs before him. With both feet partially amputated, he couldn’t join a beaming, white-haired woman as she swung into a snappy two-step. All but deaf, he couldn’t hear as a few old-timers in the audience belted out the lyrics: Everybody has a man-i-a/ For that polka from Pennsyl-van-i-a...

But he sure could play.

For 20 years, Dalichau has hauled out his accordion and rolled out the barrel at convalescent hospitals and centers for the elderly. He’s not the only entertainer playing the senior circuit for the joy of it, but he’s been doing it so long and with such flair that the folks at the Highland Club Adult Day Center threw a surprise party Monday to honor him.

“You better believe I’m surprised,” he said, his speech redolent with the Berlin in which he grew up. “I did not know I had so many friends.”

County Supervisor Kathy Long presented him with a plaque certifying lifetime achievement. Directors of senior programs from throughout the county praised him as they shared in punch and cookies. On hand to jam with their old pal were fellow musicians like the Golden Age Songsters and saxophone player “Oatmeal”--”They call me that because I’m soft and mushy”--Flaharty.

On the floor, kids from Children’s Wonderland--a day-care center that shares a building with Highland--clapped when Dalichau played “Old MacDonald.” Some danced when the spirit moved them.

Twice a day, the kids share a half-hour activity with the seniors.

Dalichau took it all in stride. After he shed his accordion, his wife, Martha, helped him turn around, sit down and place his hands on the keys of his first musical love, the piano.

Then he plunged into a round of follow-the-bouncing-white-dot standards: “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles.” “Take Me Out To the Ball Game.” “California Here I Come.” At one point, he launched into a lush Teutonic melody--the kind he played so long ago on riverboats plying the Rhine.

It has been a long road for him, although he shrugs off the suggestion that it may also have been painful.

“A million million other people went through the same thing,” he said.

In Germany, he wanted to pursue a career in music but his father deemed it impractical. So Dalichau acquired a credential in pastry from a culinary institute in Bavaria.

With World War II looming, he was drafted and shipped to the Russian front. During an escape from a prisoner-of-war camp there, frostbite claimed half of his right foot and four of the toes on his left.

After the war, he managed to locate Martha in the chaos of their devastated homeland. Thirteen years later, they immigrated to the United States with their four children and settled in Camarillo.

“Every morning he’d leave at 4 a.m. for his job as a pastry chef in Santa Monica,” Martha recalled. “But when his eyesight got really bad about 20 years ago, he had to retire.”

Cornea transplants didn’t take and glaucoma advanced. Later, Dalichau’s hearing deteriorated.

But to a retired pastry chef who loves the waltzes of Strauss more than any Linzer torte, such infirmities are merely irksome when music is involved.

Dalichau plays three or four gigs a week, sometimes for people who have little left but a thirst for melody.

“Any activity that can get convalescent residents to clap their hands and tap their feet is an inspiration,” said Jody Rambadt, who directs activities for the residents at Country Villa Oxnard Manor.

Dalichau once took a special interest in soothing a bedridden resident from Germany. He would stand by her bedside with his accordion, playing German songs of her choice after each of his regular performances.

“He brought a lot of happiness to her in her final days,” Rambadt said.

Norma Nalus, administrator of the Highland Club, said Dalichau has made the same kind of connection there. One Christmas, a withdrawn Alzheimer’s patient from Vienna stunned the staff by walking over to Dalichau and singing along with him as he crooned “Oh Christmas Tree” in German.

“There was not a dry eye in the building,” she said.