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Jon Landell Sr. reminisces about hislifetime romance with the flute. Continued from page 2.

I finally turned to something that was very important to me as a young man, but had been lost along the way somehow. I began to go to church and to pray with my whole heart, asking for forgiveness, for help, and for a lifetime helper. Within the next two years all those prayers were answered. I met Marcie who had been looking for a summer job, and we found a very nice local church nearby. We decided to get married in the summer of 1978 and moved to northern Vermont to be closer to her family in Richmond. After a long search, we finally rented an old store building in Huntington, only a few miles from her parent's home. During the four years we lived there we had many visitors who were looking for fine professional flutes, so we hired another man to help with the work. We also began giving training to flute workers who wanted to learn how to repair and build hand made flutes. The Vermont Guild of Flute Making, Inc. was started in 1982, and I began writing a little book about how to take the flute apart and put it back together using the correct tools. The Landell Flute Tune-Up Manual was published in 1982 using an Apple IIe computer and a Brother typewriter connected together with some kind of communication board that I bought for it. Those were blissful years of flute making in peace and quiet, until my beautiful young wife became pregnant with Jon Jr., and we knew the store building was going to be too small for our new family.

We thought about buying a real home, but we didn't have any savings for a down payment. Naturally we were praying about this need, and the prayers were answered. Just about that time we were asked to quickly submit a flute for a musical instrument exhibition in Baltimore, MD, and the only flute that could be ready in time was a flute that Marcie was making for herself in the evenings or weekends. We quickly finished her flute and sent it out to the museum, who sent it back to us by the hand of another instrument maker... who had his entire Volkswagon van full of instruments robbed during a stop in New York City. Every one of those instruments vanished completely - including Marcie's flute. In a disaster-turned-blessing, the insurance company paid well on the claim, giving us the deposit on our first home. (Update: we now know that Marcie's flute was sold on the black market and is still alive, somewhere in New York City. We will pay for the recovery of this instrument.)

Well, how can I possibly relate all the details for you about the rest of this story? It would take much too long! To summarize, we've moved into the house that Marcie grew up in, with our five children. We built an addition on the side of the house for the workshop and an apartment for her parents over it. We even have enough room here to accommodate the many people who still come to visit and learn about my flutes and flute making. We have attracted a lot of attention with our new flutes and head joints. Music has continued to be a very important part of my life; the last few years I have organized a chamber music ensemble of many excellent freelance players who work at other jobs in the Northern Vermont area. I've made professional recordings of two concerts now, and I sell the cassette tapes to people who would like to hear the sound of the new titanium flute in concert. All of our children are musicians, of course, and we find that making music together as a family is one of the most rewarding things we do together. I hope you have read the very fine article in Flutist Quarterly, Spring '99 issue, by one of my students, Ken Haslam, about his three week "total immersion" at my summer courses. Ken really saw something here and described well the atmosphere of our family and the natural beauty of Vermont. I love it. It's really the perfect place to work quietly, make beautiful flutes, and raise a family of musicians.

I am feeling the effects of mid-life, but without the so-called crisis that many people experience, especially men. The foundation that I've found through faith in Christ, reading his book and especially through daily prayer, have all contributed to an inner stability that has kept me from falling in many of life's difficult situations. We are all faced with deep waters in this life, but here in the US as in most industrialized countries, our world-and-life-view is thoroughly humanistic and secular. This so-called philosophy is really a shabby religion, with most people blindly putting faith in man rather than in the God who made them. While having dedicated a lifetime to both, I've learned that we can't find ultimate meaning in music or art... or in human achievements and political systems. It's only through a relationship with the Creator of the Universe, as revealed in his Son on the pages of Scripture, through repentance for our sins and trust in his means of reconciliation, that we can find true peace and meaning in this life and for eternity.

-Jonathon Landell Sr.
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