Funeral Notices

My first job after leaving school was at Young & Lambert, Easdown and Co. Mr Stocks was one of the partners of that firm. I will always remember him for his lovely easy and sunny personality. Always a smile for you and a conversation, which inevitably included asking how you were and how was your day going. Great memories of a time long gone but never forgotten. My condolences also to Rhonda, memories also of our Albury High School days and playing netball.

Here is what i have previously written about Graham Stocks, Isobel Williams and my father, Stan Jackling, all of whom were members in the Albury Methodist Church:

The Hammond organ served the Albury Methodist Church Church well. Indeed, during war time, no organ tuners were available to service the town’s pipe organs so by the end of the war the pipe organs were in a state of disrepair and only the Hammond organ was still in tune! For some years, in fact, it was the sole organ in town reliable enough to accompany congregational and choir singing.

When Graham Stocks arrived in Albury, the war was still on and each Sunday there was an influx of soldiers from the army camp at Bandiana. They would come in by bus to the various evening services in Albury. A group would attend the service at the Wesley Church, which was followed by fellowship and supper. Some Army men sang in the choir. Graham Stocks wrote about one incident in relation to these military gentlemen as follows:

I received a phone call from one of the soldiers. He told me that he enjoyed singing at the service and he wondered what hymns we would be singing at the next service. I told him that I would go and get the list. He wanted to know in what order the hymns would be sung. ‘Well, that’s great!’ he said, and he thanked me very much. A year or so later I found out that they were running a book and were betting on the hymn numbers!

During 1947–1955 Stan Jackling was the conductor of the City of Albury Choral Society, which put on concert performances of a number of operas in which voice was accompanied by piano. On Sunday nights during 1950 the Jackling family used to listen on the radio to ‘The Mobil Quest’ which featured young singers singing operatic arias. One Sunday night Stan Jackling was particularly attracted to a female voice which he adjudged to be ‘grand material’. He invited her to sing solo, in a trio and with the choir in Albury in a choral society concert titled ‘Prelude to Christmas’ on 7 December 1950 at the Plaza Theatre. In Stan Jackling’s words: ‘She came and sang not always in pitch on a disgustingly hot, steaming night!’. But the young 23-year-old import from Melbourne was none other than Joan Sutherland, who sang for the grand fee of seven pounds ten shillings plus travelling expenses! The rest is history!

During this period when the Choral Society was in operation there were several occasions on which the choir of the Wesley Methodist Church, Albury performed cantatas and oratorios such as The Crucifixion, Elijah and Olivet to Calvary. Word got around and the church choir was augmented by choristers from the Choral Society. On some of these occasions, such as the 9 December 1955 performance of Messiah, Graham Stocks was at the organ and Stan Jackling was conductor. During this period, Isobel Williams was a chorister in the church choir and Choral Society. She was also a law clerk to Stan Jackling and the author of The March of Methodism, a history of Methodism in the Albury district.

Graham Stocks, a chartered accountant by profession, also tells a story that relates to the era following the Second Vatican Council, which concluded in December 1964. As Graham tells it, Pope Paul VI announced that he wanted a singing church, with hymns (religious poems) and spiritual songs. The Roman Catholic tradition had primarily been one of chant and plain song sung by priests and choirs. This contrasted markedly with the Methodist tradition of hymns and spiritual songs sung by the congregation. Now there was a move by the Catholic Church to introduce more congregational singing, and priests and nuns began composing new works. Sister Teresina, a pianist, violinist and community musician who taught at St Joseph’s High School, and who worshipped at St Patrick’s Catholic Church Albury, was at the forefront of this development in Albury. She was keen for her church to speedily move into this new era and soon had school girls strumming guitars in church supplying the musical accompaniment for new songs. Additionally she decided to learn to play the organ so as to play hymns, and who better to learn from than the Methodists? So Graham Stocks became her organ teacher. But there’s more! She also wanted to learn how to sing the hymns; Isobel Williams, whose two nieces were being taught music by Sister Teresina, invited her to join the choir. She readily agreed, as did the choir conductor, and, for a time she came to Methodist church services, always accompanied by another nun as then required. As Graham Stocks played the organ, there before him were two nuns dressed in their habits singing their hearts out!

On one occasion Graham Stocks visited the Catholic church in Smollett Street. Its pipe organ had been overhauled but the end result was grossly unsatisfactory. The church sought Graham’s advice on the introduction of an electronic organ to replace it. So a small group that included Sister Teresina went into the church. Where might a new console be located? Could the gallery of organ pipes be preserved? The group assembled in the transept and proceeded to look upwards to the elevated gallery of pipes. As they got nearer to the pipes the angle of inclination of the neck required to view them gradually increased to the point where Graham lost balance, stumbled, and as he fell he took Sister Teresina down with him! There they were, organist and nun, in a heap together on the floor of the Albury Catholic church, much to the amusement of the startled group of parishioners and priests!

Many years after these contacts between the Albury Methodist and Catholic churches there was to be a kind of sequel. Isobel Williams’ brother Bill Williams, himself a Methodist, had married a Catholic, and following his death in 2004 the funeral service was conducted at St Patrick’s Catholic Church—with Graham Stocks playing a pipe organ, the organ that ultimately replaced the Conn organ that he recommended that the church should buy on the occasion of his tumble with Teresina. Sadly Sister Teresina (Teresa Mogliotti) could not be there; she had died in 1978 at the age of 45 years. She was buried in the Albury Lawn Cemetery but in 1994 her family arranged for her body to be exhumed and re-interred in the cemetery at Griffith.

Moving on with Conn

As time marched on, new electronic organs were coming on the market and were showing improvements in quality compared with the Hammond. They could more closely replicate the sound of the pipe organ. So Graham Stocks advanced the case for the purchase of a new electronic organ and on 3 November 1969 he reported to the trustees that the required funds for the purchase of a Conn electronic organ had been raised. The new organ was dedicated at a service on 15 February 1970.

The Hammond organ, which had served the church for over thirty years, just a little longer than the Mason & Hamlin, was sold to a Melbourne pop group for $1250.

Graham Stocks continued as organist of Wesley Church until the church union that in 1977 created the Uniting Church. He then became organist at St David’s, the former Presbyterian church where he moved to a two manual Fincham pipe organ that had been installed in 1927.

When Wesley Church was sold to the NSW Police Department in 1990 the Conn electronic organ was moved to St David’s where it continues to reside in a church hall.

In 1996, Graham Stocks was awarded an honorary Master of Arts degree by Charles Sturt University for his contribution to music in the Border area, including his role in establishing the Murray Conservatorium of Music. His ‘service to the community, as an organist and to music education, particularly through the establishment of the Murray Conservatorium’ was again recognised when on 26 January 2006 a Medal of the Order of Australia was bestowed upon him.

And so it is that from 1926 to this very day there have only been two organists of the Wesley Church, Albury and its successor in part, St David’s Uniting Church, Albury. That’s over eighty years!