A lifetime of traveling lands musician in Sussex County

It took Stephen Klyce awhile to settle down in Sussex County, but lower Delaware's slow pace now suits him just fine.

“It's inexpensive and easy to get around,” the Michigan-born Klyce said. “There's also a lot of churches that I can get to.”

For Klyce, church life is important.

At age 9, he said, his parents paid for piano lessons in Jackson, Michigan. That was 1941 as the United States was entering World War II. His parents both helped the war effort while working at Flint Structural Steel. By age 13, Klyce took his keyboard skills and began lessons on a pipe organ at a local church – a skill he has honed every day since.

Learning to work the buttons, foot pedals, stops and knobs that produce the intense sound of a pipe organ intrigued the young boy and continues to fascinate Klyce today.

“I like the different colors, strength and power of the pipe organ,” he said. “It can take hold of or fill up a whole room.”

Klyce's attention to detail serves him well in understanding the intricacies of playing the organ. He notices minute details that many fail to see, interrupting his story to point out an eagle ornament atop a flag that appears to be flying away from instead of toward a viewer.

“If I could get to that I would turn it around,” he said. “It's just one of those details that I notice.”

Klyce said he had mastered the pipe organ well enough by age 17 to play an entire church service; he was working as a substitute organist at Detroit-area churches by age 18.

Klyce earned a music degree at Michigan State University and continued at Union Theological Seminary of Sacred Music in New York City, a renowned institution throughout the mid-20th century that gave students a deep knowledge of European music and art. Klyce said he took organ lessons at an Episcopal church in Brooklyn and had opportunities to play at other churches throughout the city.

His college and graduate studies were largley paid for with scholarships, he said, but to pay for uncovered costs, he worked part time as a tree trimmer or assisting an organ builder.

Following the music seminary, Klyce spent two years in the Army working as a chaplain assistant, working at four or five chapels on an Army post in Missouri.

Klyce got out of the Army in 1958 and began teaching music and playing church organs for two-year stints at various locations. He married, had three children and the family moved five times in 11 years, from New Jersey to Milwaukee to Detroit to Indiana – where he earned a doctorate degree in music from Indiana University – and finally to Columbus, Ohio, where he worked as an assistant professor of music.

All the traveling may have taken its toll on his family, though, he said, when his wife left with their three young children ages 2, 4, and 5.

“I would've stayed with the first wife, but she wasn't happy with me,” he said, resolutely.

His move to University of New Hampshire did not last long because, he said, he wanted to be closer to his children. Moving to Louisville in 1978 and 1979, Klyce said, it was there he played piano and organ at an African-Amercian Baptist church. He eventually played at four other African-American churches.

“I don't know why they had me play, but they did,” he said. “I enjoyed the singing and always thought I was getting more out of this.”

By the mid-1990s Klyce made a final move to Sussex County, close enough to his grown children, who settled in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland.

Ever-amiable, he promptly found jobs as an organist for St. Michael the Archangel and Mary, Mother of Peace. He bought a home in Dagsboro and at 19 years has now lived in Sussex County longer than any other location in his 83 years.

“I wouldn't have changed anything music-wise,” he said. “I don't feel like I moved around a lot, but I've been here 19 years.”

With his special shoes to operate the organ pedals, and a few other organist tricks up his sleeve, he may move a bit slower than he used to, but he still plays organ every Sunday at Manokin Presbyterian Church in Princess Anne, Md.

In his free time, Klyce said, he enjoys traveling, writing and collecting things: salt and pepper shakers, root beer bottles, picture frames – small items that he notices, part of that attention to detail he's apt to share at any given moment.

With his pleasant, easygoing personality, he fits right in with the slower-lower lifestyle, and he's glad to call Sussex his home.

“I'm not a native easterner, but I feel like it,” he said.