Tom Bowlus’s 105-year-old piano, made by Henry Miller of Boston, offers a campaign opportunity for Kansas Attorney General Steve Six.
It’s a bit complicated.
Bowlus left the piano to the fine arts center named after him. Or maybe one of his kin folks did. In any case, the Bowlus Center has it sitting in storage. It isn’t on the Bowlus stage or orchestra pit because it needs help. New sound board. Ivory for some of the major keys. The black minor ones were left alone. Would look better with its wonderful old wood stripped, sanded and refinished. Maybe the pedals need polishing, too.
All told, it needs $10,000 worth of expert help to again sound and look like the Carnegie Hall standout that it wants to be; and, besides, it did belong to Mr. Bowlus, who played it, and loved it and will be mightily pleased to look down in pride upon it.
The late Fern Marsh thought it worth saving, too, and left $1,000 in her will to get a fund drive started.
So what does this quaint tale have to do with Nov. 2 and Attorney General Steve Six and partisan politics?
It’s a bit complicated.
A week or so ago State Sen. Derek Schmidt was in the Bowlus Fine Arts Center and Center Caesar Susan Raines told him about Tom’s piano and the $10,000 repair bill and, at his request, showed the piano — Band-Aids and all — to him.
“Tell you what I’ll do,” Sen. Schmidt said, “be-cause Fern Marsh left $1,000 to start a refurbishing fund, I’ll give $1,000, too. Providing ( … if it’s a politician speaking, there’s always a ‘providing,’ ya know) providing there are $1,000 of other gifts to match mine.”
It’s a matching money gift and that is where AG Six enters the picture.
Six, you see, has a personal reason to want Sen. Schmidt spend his money on that Henry Miller of Boston piano rather than on more political ads saying that Six isn’t sexy, or whatever Schmidt’s ads say about the AG. So the more money the senator spends in Iola, the less he’ll have to promote himself and put Mr. Six down. And that, patient reader, is why Attorney General Steven Six should sit down right now and send a check to the Friends of the Bowlus piano fund.
YOU CAN WRITE one, too. Whether you want Mr. Six or Sen. Schmidt to be the attorney general of Kansas for the next four years or just want to join Fern Marsh, God rest her musical soul, in honoring the memory of Tom Bowlus by fixing up his piano, is really beside the point. Write the check for a good cause — or because you’d like to see Derek dig down and cough up his $1,000. It’s a win-win deal.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
