Organ Belles performed from 1973-2002
In August 1973, a group of women in Bella Vista who loved playing the organ formed a group they called the Organ Belles. The group lasted almost 30 years, disbanding in 2002 as members aged or moved away. Carolyn Wellons was the founder and Elizabeth Farnsworth was the first president.
The group’s purpose was formally stated in its yearbook: “To be able to play well, even a simple melody, gives satisfaction to the soul that cannot be derived from hearing the greatest artist perform. Every soul deserves such happiness. Music quiets, relaxes, and comforts. It also stirs, inspires and renews. It brings satisfaction as it stimulates to brighten life with a note of happiness. The Organ Belles strive to spread some of this happiness throughout Bella Vista while perpetuating the study and performance of music through a scholarship award each year.”
The Organ Belles entertained for other organ clubs in northwest Arkansas, played weekly at the Concordia Care Center and sponsored concerts at Riordan Hall. They also provided background organ music for several organizations during a number of events. Members of the club took turns hosting meetings at one another’s homes, September through May. They started with two meetings a month, but in 1994 decided to switch to monthly meetings. Each year they elected officers, which included a “Conductor” (the president who conducted their business meetings) and a “Maestro” who was also referred to as the “Teacher.” Each member was required to prepare a number and play it at one of the meetings.
A very active group, they held annual spring and Christmas luncheons at various restaurants in the Bella Vista area, and salad luncheons at members’ homes on other occasions. They donated funds to several nonprofit groups and awarded an annual scholarship to a music student, using the proceeds from selling Northwest Arkansas restaurant coupon books. They sometimes went on field trips to see another organ at a church, a university or someone else’s home. Several members also volunteered their time with other musical groups, such as the Village Bells, which was a bell choir.
The Village Bells practiced weekly and performed on a regular basis,
including for some benefit concerts.
The Bella Vista Historical Museum, in its scrapbook repository cabinets, has two scrapbooks of the Organ Belles. One of them contains an article from the “Weekly Vista,” dated October 25, 1977, stating that Carolyn Wellons won the “Woman of the Year” award at the annual convention of the Amateur Organists Association International, held in Minneapolis that year. The club had joined the association in 1975. In addition, the club won “Club of the Year” at the same convention, with Elizabeth Farnsworth accepting the award on behalf of the club.
Carolyn Wellons was living in Florida in 1962 when she joined an Organ Belles club there. In 1972, she moved to Bella Vista and founded the Bella Vista club the following year. In 1978, she moved back to Florida, where she was a church organist for the First Baptist Church of Cutler Ridge in Miami. She died in 2016.
Elizabeth Farnsworth remained in Bella Vista, where she died in 1990, and is buried at Dug Hill Cemetery at Town Center.
Carol Whiteside was one of the early members of the Organ Belles. A lifelong musician, she began taking piano lessons in the first grade and joined the American Guild of Organists when she was in college. She lived in Augusta, Kan., when she was married to David Allison. After he died in 1972, she moved to Bella Vista in 1975, where she met Allen Whiteside and remarried. Following his death in 1998, she moved to Texas in 2001, where she lived until her death in 2006. (Author’s note:
The name Carol Whiteside meant nothing to this author but, upon reading her obituary while doing research for this article, this author realized that Carol Whiteside was the former Mrs. Allison, who was this author’s fifth-grade music teacher in Augusta, Kansas!)
When the Organ Belles disbanded in 2002, Rachel Case was interviewed for an article in the August 21, 2002, “Weekly Vista,” in which she stated, “… we tried to stick it out as long as we could, but we weren’t getting any new members and were losing some of our old ones.” She said the group was formed with approximately 20 members, and that the membership had gotten as high as 30 people, with most members being organists or assistant organists in area churches. To be a member of the group, a person had to have their own organ and a love of music. The group started its last year with 12 members and was down to seven at the end, with only three showing up at the final meeting. Some members had moved away and others were not able to be as active as they once were due to health reasons. Rachel had been a member since 1982. (She died the following year after that interview, in 2003.)
Henry Anderson and his wife, Bertha Mae, moved to Bella Vista from Iowa in the winter of 1976-77. She is one of the surviving Organ Belles members. After Henry died in 1981, she became the cellist in a newly organized string quartet, giving concerts at Riordan Hall and the Country Club. She had gotten acquainted with
Carol Whiteside at their church and she became involved with the Organ Belles, joining in 1986 and serving as president for two years starting in 1988. She eventually moved back to Iowa, where she taught piano at her downtown studio, a total of 25 students, and played for three different church services on Sunday, including an afternoon one in Spanish (she said the music was the same, regardless of what language the lyrics were in). All that stopped when the virus pandemic hit earlier this year. She celebrated her 99th birthday last month, on Nov. 20, and now considers herself retired but very healthy!
Asked about her memories of the Organ Belles, Bertha Mae said, “One aspect of the organization was that every member’s organ was different, so it was a challenge to find suitable stops from your own. Each member was required to prepare and perform a number at the meetings. Also, some had a full pedalboard and some only one octave for the left foot (serious organists learn to use both feet, heel-toe method, on a full pedalboard). My organ, which is still here in my music room along with the piano I bought in the 1940s, has a full board.”
When asked specifically about her memories about Carol Whiteside, she replied, “We moved to Bella Vista in December 1976 and were immediately invited to the Community Church’s Sunday service that was being held in Riordan Hall … Henry was asked to do a solo the next Sunday (Carol was the organist) and by the next Sunday, I think, he was offered the paying choir directorship position … Carol suggested that she and I do organ/piano duets at church each Sunday which meant prelude, offertory and postlude. Of course, we both accompanied the congregational singing. By then the new church had been built. We would practice every Wednesday night prior to choir practice … Carol and I became close friends. She did all the selecting of what we played and to avoid repeating, we ended up with literally dozens of books that we played from, which I still have.”
Another surviving Organ Belle is Marilyn Lee, who was their Maestro (also referred to as their “Teacher”) from 1988 until they disbanded in 2002. When asked, she said, “I still have three keyboards, one church-sized organ, and two pianos.” She had remained very active in the world of music until the virus pandemic hit, giving piano lessons to several students, serving as accompanist for the Bella Vista Men’s Chorus (which Bertha Mae’s husband, Henry Anderson, founded in 1978) and as organist for the Central United Methodist Church in Rogers, among a variety of other roles. She hopes to resume all of those roles in the future.
There were a few other organist groups in Bella Vista but none lasted as long as the Organ Belles.