Waffle Memorial

When Mrs. Henry Ford was an apple-cheeked Michigan farm girl named Clara Bryant, she used to go on Sunday mornings to St. Paul's Memorial Episcopal Church in Detroit, accompanied by her grandfather who stoked the church fires, dusted the pews. First organist at St. Paul's was Sara Angelina Waffle, who on severe winter days had her old-fashioned pump organ pushed up next to the stove to prevent her fingers from becoming numb. Frequently in the course of a sermon Organist Waffle would sidle off her bench to put a stick of wood on the fire.

Sara Angeline Waffle pumped on the St. Paul's organ for 35 years, gave Clara Bryant her first music lessons, retired in 1915. Last week when she was nearing her 80th birthday, she was back again, stanchly playing Just As I Am Without One Plea. This time, though, she did not have to exert herself at all because there was a new organ in St. Paul's, a Hammond Electric, inscribed: "To the Glory of God and as a tribute and memorial to Sara Angeline Waffle, organist of this parish for the first 35 years of its life. This organ is presented to St. Paul's Episcopal Church by her friend, Mrs. Henry Ford -- Easter 1936."

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