He calls his barn the Hooper Tabernacle, and from within its walls, he speaks jokingly of serenading the 25 cows and calves on his 17-acre farm with renditions of "Home on the Range."
But to Hal Stoddard, the pipe organ he has lovingly assembled over the past 10 years is a serious matter."It is mainly here to inspire and uplift," said Brother Stoddard, who serves as organist in the Hooper 5th Ward, Hooper Utah Stake. "My prayer night and morning is to bring honor and glory to Him and inspire and uplift whomever comes to hear it."
Visitors come quite frequently these days, as Brother Stoddard's project has attracted local news media attention. Apparently, the public is fascinated with this man in blue jeans and western boots whose devotion to music and the things of the Spirit motivated such an effort.
The Stoddard farm actually has two barns. One is for the cows. The other he built expressly for the organ, although he has cared for sick calves within its heated shelter.
A shack south of the building contains an electrically powered blower that sends air through regulators to the pipes. Arranged vertically in one end of the building and horizontally in rafters overhead are some 2,400 pipes in widely ranging sizes. Only about 400 function right now; the others are yet to be arranged in various voices and ranks. The organ is a work in progress.
To help it along, he has engaged three fellow pipe organ enthusiasts, whom he calls geniuses. One is Mervin Brown, who installs and maintains pipe organs professionally and who helped maintain the Salt Lake Tabernacle organ for 10 years. His assistant is Blaine Olson. Sean McFarland built the electronic relay that essentially makes the pipes respond when the keys or pedals are pressed.
Each of the three men has a pipe organ in his home, and the help they give Brother Stoddard is motivated by their own fascination with the instrument as much as anything else. All four express dissatisfaction with playing electronic organs, having been immersed so deeply in pipe organ music.
As for remuneration, "I give Marv half a beef every time I butcher one, and I give Sean meat," explained Brother Stoddard, who works for the Church maintaining facilities in the Roy Preventive Maintenance Group.
Reared on the farm he now owns, Brother Stoddard traces his affinity for pipe organs to his boyhood when he heard Alexander Schreiner play the Salt Lake Tabernacle Organ.
He took piano lessons as a boy. Organ lessons in his teen years fostered a love for the instrument.
His organ, he said, is a "hybrid" built chiefly from all or parts of three he acquired, two by answering advertisements through the American Guild of Organists.
"With a project like this, you have to have a broad-minded wife," Brother Stoddard said, adding his wife, Joyce, "has been disappointed in it, and then sometimes, I think she's happy. It goes up and down."
Added Brother Olson, "The first night we got it going, she thought she'd died and gone to heaven."
That is an emotion Brother Stoddard feels quite often. Borrowing a phrase from Michael Barone, narrator of public radio's "Pipe Dreams," he said organ music is "the sound of immortality."
"It takes me to a different world. When I hear good organ music, or when I play it, it takes me somewhere else."