Father, son mare ‘joyous noise’
Organists fill worship Centers with Century of musical experience
LROARING BROOK TOWNSHIP, Pa. father, like son. With a century of combined musical experience under their belts, Carl Coates, 83, and son Scott Coates, 48, have spent most of their Sunday mornings playing organs in local churches. There is no place either would rather be than seated at an organ, leading congregants in worship with music and hymns.
A West Pittston resident and Wyoming Valley West Middle School choral teacher, Scott Coates said he believes his musical talent is a gift from God. He plays at St. Eulalia Parish in Roaring Brook Township.
“I’m doing it because I was given this ability to play and I enjoy it,” he said. “One of the best feelings for me to see the hymn books open and see the people singing, and to hear the church filled with people singing.”
His father agreed and said he has been fortunate to have had a lifetime of performing for others.
“It’s a job you really like doing,” said Carl Coates, who plays organ at Dorranceton United Methodist Church in Kingston. “There are not too many like that. Even if it’s just a hobby for me, I love it.”
Each started on keyboards as young boys.
A Plymouth resident, Carl Coates began playing piano at about age 10, at Valley View Union Chapel on his family’s former dairy farm property in Larksville, where he grew up.
At 19, he became the organist at Huntsville Methodist Church in Shavertown, where he remains a congregant. He later took a job at Plymouth United Methodist Church, before landing at Forty Fort United Presbyterian Church, where he stayed for 30 years.
He tried retiring from playing organ in church, but could not stay away when an opening arose at Dorranceton, where he has been the organist for the past 11 years.
The elder Coates also performed nondenominational services for many years at State Correctional Institution at Chase, after it opened several decades ago. A chaplain asked if he would help out at the prison. Coates started his Sunday mornings at the prison for services with inmates at 6 a.m., and afterward went to Forty Fort United Presbyterian Church to play during the Sunday services there.
“We never saw him on Sunday mornings,” his son joked. “I just thought that was normal. He’d leave in a suit in the morning and come back about noon. That was where dad was. He was in church every Sunday.”
Carl Coates never pushed his son to play keyboards. However, Scott Coates absorbed music from his dad and took to playing on his own, at aboutage6or7.withapianoand organ in their home, he started on organ. The elder Coates saw potential in his son, who soon started taking organ lessons from instructor Ed Loch in Wilkes-barre.
Loch suggested he should take piano lessons, and Coates did.
When Coates was about 13, a youth minister from the former Church of St. Vincent De Paul in Plymouth, Sister Rosemary Green, went door-to-door enlisting children in a youth or folk group. He was outside playing when his father called him into the house.
“I thought, ‘What did I do, I’m going to hell, there’s a nun in my house,’” Coates recalled with a laugh.
He joined the folk group as pianist. At about 17, he became St. Vincent’s music director, a post he would hold for many years. As a piano major in college, he earned a bachelor’s degree from Wilkes University in 1992.
After more than three decades at St. Vincent’s and its merged successor, All Saints Parish, he decided to step away at the end of 2015, figuring it was time to take a break and spend more time with his family. He and his wife, Jo Ann, have two children, Nathan, 12, and Carlee, 6.
Coates then went to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish in Swoyersville and became music minister of the Sunday 5:30 p.m. liturgy, a post he still holds.
Easter 2016 was the first Easter Sunday morning in decades that he was not playing organ in a church andhefeltahugevoid.
The priest at St. Elizabeth Ann Se- ton Parish, the Rev. Joseph Pisaneschi, could see how much the younger Coates missed playing organ on Sundays and made some inquiries in the Catholic Diocese of Scranton. Soon, St. Eulalia Parish in Roaring Brook called. Coates never heard of that church and never traveled to that part of Lackawanna County, east of Scranton. He became St. Eulalia’s music minister in August 2016 and loves it.
“I missed it,” he said of not being a church organist on Sundays. “Sunday morning to get up and not be in church, to not have that commitment, I couldn’t do it. I had to go back.”
During a recent St. Eulalia choir rehearsal, Coates and 15 choir members packed into a cramped balcony to practice songs for Palm Sunday. Seated at an electric organ, Coates led the group, stopping at times to give direction or make a suggestion. Some members played guitar, cello and trumpet.
Pati Pawlik, of Covington Township, a St. Eulalia parishioner for 27 years and member of the choir for a decade, said Coates makes choir participation fun.
“He brings a levity to singing,” said Pawlik, 55, a registered nurse who notes that she is not a trained singer. “We have a joyous time. They say, ‘make a joyous noise.’ We make a joyous noise.”
Father and son plan to continue as church organists for as long as they can.though his fingers are not as nimble as they used to be, Carl Coates said he still fills with joy when playing organ in church.
“I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t play organ on Sunday. I’d just be lost.”