Longtime church organist totally devoted to music

Ask Margaret McAlister to share a memory that stands out after playing the organ for 75 years, and she doesn't hesitate.

It's not sitting at a console where Bach once played, on one of her 17 trips to Europe to study music. It's not how she felt when hearing some of her own anthems performed by choirs in churches. It's not about how she juggled a busy life as a wife and mom to six kids while teaching organ and piano at local colleges and in private homes.

No, it would be the time she fell asleep, right in the middle of a giving a lesson.

"The student was doing the same exercises, over and over. It must have gotten pretty monotonous, so my mind began drifting off," she says. "I started thinking about what I would be making for supper, stuff like that. Next thing you know, the student is shaking me. Wake up, Mrs. McAlister!"

McAlister, 88, pauses for a moment, then starts laughing.

"Oh, Lord, I was just appalled ," she says.

On Jan. 8, McAlister will give a retirement concert at First Presbyterian Church in downtown Tampa, playing some of her own works and traditional favorites. Family, former students and congregants will gather afterward for a reception to honor a woman regarded as one of this city's musical icons.

Those admirers will have to adjust to a world where McAlister isn't sitting on her organ bench in the balcony at First Presbyterian each Sunday and on special occasions. It has been her second home, after all. She was hired by the church in 1947 — and never left.

"It's been a good fit," she says of her 65 years at the downtown church. "But now it's time to retire. Though I really don't want to. I just know it's time."

McAlister is a woman who doesn't like change. She's lived in the same house in Seminole Heights for 53 years, where she and her late husband, schoolteacher James McAlister, raised three sons and three daughters. She's played the same instrument since she was a teen. And since 1940, she's been a member of the American Guild of Organists, with two stints as dean of the Tampa chapter.

Besides working as church organist at First Presbyterian, McAlister also was on the music faculty at the University of Tampa and Clearwater Christian College, and served as the music department accompanist at Hillsborough Community College. She gave lessons at her house and in students' homes. It would be an impossible task to pin down the number of young musicians she has influenced in her illustrious career.

Carlton Burgess, a local composer and founder of the Burgess School of the Arts in Ybor City, is one of them.

"I'm still playing the organ, and I still love it, and I owe that to her," says Burgess, 48. "She has an awesome talent. But more important, she is one of the most gracious, personable ladies you will ever meet."

Burgess took organ lessons from McAlister for three years in the 1970s, a time when there were still racial boundaries between blacks and whites. McAlister came to his house to give him lessons without a second thought.

"After we were finished, she would sit with my mom and talk about home decorating and fashion. I had never witnessed a white person coming into our home and talking like that, on the same level," he recalls. "She became part of our family at a time when that just didn't happen."

McAlister grew up in a musical family, in a house six blocks from where she now lives. Her father sang, her mother played the piano, and McAlister and her two siblings played violin, cello, piano and organ. She credits her mother for instilling the discipline it takes to master an instrument. Simply put, they were expected to practice, practice and practice.

"If we got up early in the morning and had to use the bathroom, we would creep softly downstairs so our mother didn't hear us," McAlister recalls. "Because if she did, she would make us practice before breakfast."

Her love affair with the organ began at age 13 when she took her first lesson. A year later, she was playing at Highland Avenue Methodist Church. She was paid 50 cents a week.

She decided she could make a living at this. McAlister majored in music education and minored in organ at Florida State College for Women in Tallahassee, where she played for several congregations to pick up extra money, including a Jewish synagogue. After graduation she returned home to Tampa, where she worked a few local gigs before landing the job at First Presbyterian.

Wait. She doesn't like the word "job." To McAlister, playing the organ in church is a spiritual calling. The Rev. Fitz Conner, in his 14th year as senior pastor at First Presbyterian, agrees. He has no idea how he will possibly replace such an institution as McAlister, a "true lady with abundant talent."

"Her motivation for what she does is based on her faith commitment and wanting to serve," he says. "For her, the music is about helping Christian people gather and get closer to God. She's there to enhance the whole worship service. And she does it with a style that is smooth as silk."

Admittedly, the worship experience can be vastly different from one service to the next on Sunday mornings. Like many mainline Protestant churches located in downtowns, First Presbyterian was on the verge of closing several years ago as attendance drastically dropped off. Conner's arrival and the addition of an upbeat, contemporary service turned that around. Now young families with children and 20-somethings pack the pews at 9:30 a.m.

Not so much at the 11 a.m. traditional service, where McAlister plays. It's a much smaller gathering, but one that loyally supports this style of worship. As organist, she says she's responsible for "bringing some order" back to the sanctuary.

It's pretty clear how she stands on some of those new-fangled ways to draw new members. Not my cup of tea, she says.

"It's total pandemonium with that earlier crowd," she says. "I call it a tailgate party. They clap, drink coffee, bring food inside, listen to pretty loud music. That's all good, but I need them to leave so we can create a more worshipful atmosphere at our service. To each his own."

McAlister reluctantly agrees that her craft could be a dying art. She worries about the future of church organists. But lately, she says, she's heard optimistic reports from the American Guild of Organists that more young people are pursuing organ studies.

"It's a tradition that goes back centuries," she says. "Church and the organ belong together."

Marilyn Wirsz is the manager of Head's House of Music, which her parents bought in 1970. She took organ lessons from McAlister for several years as a child and young teen. She still stays in touch with her former teacher, who stopped in the store last month to purchase sheet music.

"Margaret has such a quiet devotion to the Lord and to music," Wirsz says. "Her dedication is something you don't see so much these days. She is truly a treasure to this community."

Wirsz happens to be the student McAlister fell asleep on nearly four decades ago during that lesson. To the woman who taught her organ, Wirsz says "all is forgiven."

"I remember it like it was yesterday," Wirsz says, laughing. "And I don't blame her at all.

"That just told me I should have practiced more to make it more interesting."