95-YEAR-OLD ORGANIST RETIRING

Ruth Taylor Gray is retiring. If her name is not familiar, you probably don’t attend the First Baptist Church of DeFuniak Springs where she was the organist since the early 1980’s, but finally retired at the age of 95. She learned to play piano in the second grade, but didn’t learn to play the organ until attending college, first at Mars Hill University in North Carolina, then Blue Mountain College in Mississippi. She moved around the country with her late husband, Charles, a chaplain in the U.S. Army. then returned to DeFuniak Springs when her husband retired from the military in 1980, and started as the organist shortly after. She will still act as the substitute organist at her church and will continue to teach her Sunday School class.