“Fire destroyed a western Iowa business that makes pipe organs for churches, schools and other customers around the world,” reads an unsigned report in Wednesday’s (6/16) Des Moines Register (IA). “The fire at Dobson Pipe Organ Builders in Lake City [Iowa] was reported around 4 p.m. Tuesday…. One employee of the company was burned when he … tried to put out the flames…. The State Fire Marshal’s Office … believes the fire was started by a malfunctioning fan that caused sawdust to ignite…. Dobson Pipe Organ Builders was founded in 1974 by Lynn Dobson… During his years at [Wayne State College in Nebraska], he built his first 12-stop mechanical action organ in a shed on his family’s farm that he sold to Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Sioux City, where it is still played. Dobson opened the Lake City factory in a former farm implement dealership on the town’s square in 1974…. Dobson … had recently finished … a $6.4 million, 32-ton, cherry-and-maple pipe organ at Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts … officially known as the Fred J. Cooper Memorial Organ…. It took almost eight years from the preliminary designs to the time the first notes were played.”
Change font size
