On Sunday, May 20 Stella Lingen and Carol Haubrich will be inducted into the Pipestone Area Schools (PAS) Instrumental Music Hall of Fame during the Band Pops Concert at the PAS auditorium.
They will join previous inductees Todd Burkholder, Kim Skatula, Cyndi Gernhart, Lori Ilse, Kenneth Senst, Georgia Taylor, Sheri Cox, Bob Morgan, Kathryn Swanson, Al Opland and Bob Carlson. They were chosen as this year’s inductees by a four-member selection committee including Steve Olson, PAS band director, a member of the Band Board and two community members.
Michelle Powers, PAS band board member, said the committee had seven Hall of Fame nominations this year.
She said they chose Haubrich based on the musical impact she’s had as a piano teacher, supporter of the PAS band and at St. Leo Catholic Church where she has been playing organ and piano for many years and worked with children on music programs. They chose Lingen for her contribution as a musician as a drummer for the Pipestone High School Band, years with the Jasper Blowhards, involvement with the Al Opland Singers and the fact that she’s played organ and piano at her church for over 50 years.
Stella Lingen
For Stella Lingen, 78, her life in music started in grade school.
She learned to play drums in sixth grade and later learned to play piano and organ. She played the keyed instruments during church services for 62 years, first at St. Martin Catholic Church in Woodstock and then at St. Joseph Catholic Church after she and her husband moved to Jasper in 1983. She still plays once a month at St. Leo Catholic Church in Pipestone and is a substitute at St. Leo and St. Catherine Catholic Church in Luverne.
Lingen taught organ lessons for a few years when she lived in Woodstock. She played drums with the Jasper Blowhards, the city’s community band, from 1983 to 2016. For several years she played drums at nursing homes, assisted living facilities and senior dances with Mavis Johansen, who played accordion. She has also served as co-president of the PAS Band Board and performed as a vocalist and drummer with the Al Opland Singers.
Lingen said she loves music and the impact it can have. When she’s sad or depressed, she said she can sit down at the piano and play and she feels better.
She has passed her love of music on to multiple generations. All six of her children play musical instruments, as do 15 of her 17 grand children and some of her 19 great-grandchildren.
The most musically influential people in her life were Myra Christian, who taught her to play piano and Al Opland, a fellow Hall of Fame member and legendary director at Pipestone schools. Lingen still remembers Opland coming to Woodstock where she lived as a child and teaching the students there music on Saturday mornings.
“I always felt Al Opland had a special place in his heart for us Woodstock kids,” she said.
Woodstock was part of the Pipestone school district at the time and had its own elementary school. Students attended high school in Pipestone.
Lingen, who graduated from Pipestone High School in 1958, said she’s never been recognized for her lifetime of music before and she was “pretty shocked” when Powers told her she’d be honored in the Hall of Fame.
“It’s just really overwhelming,” Lingen said. “I’m pretty excited, pretty thrilled.”
Carol Haubrich
Carol Haubrich, 80, started taking piano lessons at age seven or eight. She remembers that her mom learned to drive so she could take her to piano lessons.
Not that many years later, when she was 15, Haubrich started playing piano at church in her home town of Trempealeau, Wis. She went on to study instrumental music along with Spanish and French at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa.
She said she remembers every one of her piano teachers and music instructors over the years, but the most influential among them was her professor at Luther College, Weston Noble.
“He was the most wonderful music person,” she said. “At the time I was at Luther, he conducted both the concert band and the concert choir, and he conducted and led the annual production of ‘Messiah.’”
It was while she was a student at Luther College that Haubrich taught her first piano lesson. After college, she moved to Pipestone to teach Spanish. A short time later, she began teaching piano lessons in her home. She taught lessons for 54 years until she retired from it in 2016.
“It was such a joy working with all the students over the years,” she said. “I don’t miss the scheduling, but I miss the students.”
Haubrich has played organ and piano at St. Leo Catholic Church for 52 years. For 25 years she worked with MaryAnn Yseth on children’s music programs at St. Leo. She was also a member of the Al Opland Singers, the Pipestone Performing Arts Center Board and the PAS Band Board.
Music is in Haubrich’s genes. Her grandmother insisted that everyone in the family do something musical. Her father played guitar, all three of her children played piano and were in band and two were in choir while in school. She also had the privilege of teaching piano to three of her 10 grandchildren.
Haubrich said music is important to her because it has the power to enhance life and expand horizons.
“If I’m sad I can play sad songs,” she said. “If I’m happy I can play happy songs. My mom used to say she could tell what kind of day I had at school when I’d come home and sit down at the piano. I’d walk in and I’d go right to the piano and she could tell by how I played or what I played how my day had gone.”
Haubrich said she was “absolutely flabbergasted” to learn that she would be inducted into the Hall of Fame.
“I have done my thing, but I didn’t feel that it was significant enough to be in the Hall of Fame,” she said.
