Organist recalls musical journey

When he first saw a piano, he had no idea what it was.

So six-year-old Peter Kinzie crawled up on the piano bench and pressed some of the black and white keys. “It was electrifying,” he recalled last week, nearly 65 years later, with an ear-to-ear smile. “That started my musical interest. From that point forward I have been involved with music in one fashion or another.”

Kinzie, owner and tonal director of an Orlando, Fla., pipe and electronic organ shop, was in Enterprise last week to install a new organ for Christ the King Lutheran Church on East Watts Street.

The Lutheran church’s organist had previously purchased one of Kinzie’s organs for her home and Kinzie cautioned her that once she played it she would never be happy playing anything less.

Christ the King Lutheran Church decided to purchase an electronic organ from Kinzie and Friday, May 6, he completed the two-day installation of the organ, custom built in Italy. “I was actually involved in the research and development of this organ with the Italians,” Kinzie explained. “They were kind enough to let me participate in the development of this series of organs so I used to fly to Italy three or four times a year— so I have a very personal interest in this organ.”

Two days after the installation was complete, Kinzie performed a Mother’s Day concert at Christ the King Lutheran Church with music that ran the gamut from orchestral and classical to traditional church hymns and patriotic tunes. “I play music that people can recognize,” he said. “There are a lot of wonderful ‘non-organ sounds’ that people don’t expect to hear out of an organ.”

Kinzie took a break during the organ installation to share some of a life’s journey that began in Germany at the end of World War II.

“I was evacuated from East Germany about 10 days before the Russians closed the border in 1947,” Kinzie said. Two year’s old at the time, Kinzie was placed in an orphanage near Dachau in southern West Germany. “That’s where I lived for the next four years,” he said. His mother had died and he never did see his father, who remained in East Germany, again.

At the age of six, Kinzie was told he was going to the United States to live with a new family. “I was adopted. That is how I got to the United States,” Kinzie said. “Dr. and Mrs. Kinzie told the adoption agency that they wanted to adopt a boy war orphan.

“The story I’m told is that their criteria was that the child was to be a German, male, war orphan,” Kinzie said. “I happened to be all three of those things. I was adopted sight unseen.”

Not speaking a word of English, Kinzie was placed in quarantine on Ellis Island in New York upon his arrival stateside for nearly five weeks because he had a triple case of pneumonia. “So that was my welcome to America,” Kinzie said.

Joseph and Frances Kinzie spoke “college German,” Kinzie said. “I was told that we stayed in a hotel in New York City and they made a sandwich-board sign to hang around my neck with my name and the message that I did not speak English and should be returned to them at the hotel in the event that I got lost.”

Kinzie graduated from high school in 1964. “It was during the Vietnam War and I knew that the possibility of being drafted was a reality, “ he said. In anticipation of being drafted, Kinzie joined the Army and spent the next two years stationed in Germany.

After his discharge from the Army, Kinzie remained in Germany traveling and attending college courses before returning to the Orlando, Fla., area.

After working at a restaurant while attending Florida State University, Kinzie was finally able to work in the organ business after graduation. That is where he remains today.

Music has been in Kinzie’s soul since he first crawled onto his mother’s piano bench nearly 70 years ago, he said. “My mother was quite a musician,” he recalled. “We had two upright pianos in our home.

“I learned to play and then I got very interested in the mechanics of it,” Kinzie said. “We had an old pump organ that I used to pump to death.

“Then I figured out a way to hook our vacuum cleaner to it so I wouldn’t have to work so hard,” Kinzie recalled with a laugh. “I was about eight years old when I discovered that.

“The vacuum cleaner was too loud so I figured out a way to extend the hose,” Kinzie added. “That’s what started my interest in how things are built.”

“I play because I love it,” Kinzie said. “I sell organs for a living.”