When Frank Willingham was a boy, he and a friend often conducted Sunday school for other children in a barn behind his parents' house in College Park.
The friend would deliver brief sermons and Frank would supply the music, playing familiar hymns by striking bottles filled with water at varying levels to sound the necessary notes.
Thus did Mr. Willingham's career in church music begin.
In 1925, at age 11, he began serious study of the piano and organ, becoming accomplished enough that the College Park Baptist Church gave him an old reed organ for practicing. He proudly brought it home on a horse-drawn wagon, playing tunes on it along the way, said his wife of 63 years, Jane Willingham.
By the late 1920s Mr. Willingham was taking the streetcar daily to practice on the pipe organ of the Westminster Presbyterian Church, then located on Ponce de Leon Avenue in Atlanta. It cost him 25 cents an hour for the practice time, Mrs. Willingham said.
At age 16, Mr. Willingham started playing organ for services at St. John's Episcopal Church in College Park, and his church music career didn't end until he was in his late 80s. His only pauses in more than seven decades were for college -- first the University of Southern California and then Westminster Choir College in Princeton, N.J. -- and for military service. During World War II he was a U.S. Navy lieutenant in charge of a naval store in North Africa.
In all, Mr. Willingham was organist and choir director at College Park Baptist Church, the Baptist Tabernacle, Gordon Street Presbyterian Church, Bethany Presbyterian Church and College Park First United Methodist Church. In the last dozen years of his career, he was organist at Southwest Christian Church in East Point.
In addition, from the late 1940s to the early 1970s he was organist for a nationally broadcast radio show, "The Baptist Hour," later named "The "Protestant Hour," both produced in Atlanta.
Frank Doty Willingham, 96, of College Park died March 26 of Parkinson's disease complications at Southwest Christian Care Hospice. A memorial service Monday at Southwest Christian Church will begin with musical preludes at 1:30 p.m. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made in his memory to Southwest Christian Care Hospice, 7225 Lester Road, Union City, GA 30291 or www.swchristiancare.org. Donehoo-Lewis Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.
Mr. Willingham's playing earned the admiration of his colleagues. Said Ron Taylor, organist at the Earl Smith Strand Theatre in Marietta: "Frank did not play by rote. He played lyrically, with a lot of emotion."
The Rev. James Smith of Newnan, associate pastor at Southwest Christian Church, said Mr. Willingham was a very versatile musician. "He could make key changes on the fly, sailing through them simply by ear," he said.
"Frank made the organ sing, something only a few organists do anymore," said Ted Guerrant of Laurel, Md., organist and choir director at St. Margaret's Episcopal Church in Washington.
Mr. Guerrant was a fifth-grader living next door to the Willinghams' College Park home when he started organ lessons in 1961.
Mr. Willingham had two pipe organs installed in his house, and Mr. Guerrant loved to hear his mentor play.
"Sometimes in the evening Frank would crank up one of his organs to practice," he said. "When I heard its motor start up next door, that was a signal for me to listen. I would open a window, and since the organ's pipes were up in the Willinghams' attic, the sound carried easily over to our house.
"Frank was an inspiring teacher," Mr. Guerrant said. "He's the reason I chose a career in music."
Also surviving are a daughter, Carol Willingham of Atlanta; two sons, Stephen Willingham of Smyrna and David Willingham of College Park; three grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
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