ENTERPRISE — Ellen Nesbitt slides off one organ bench onto another every Sunday as she moves from playing hymns on the St. Patrick Episcopal Church’s organ, to settling in to play for the Enterprise Community Congregational Church (the “Big Brown Church”) on its organ and then on the piano — all within 30 minutes.

She started her dual assignment last June, but one week later broke her wrist and was out for several weeks. She was able to return in September.

Nesbitt started playing the organ when she was 14 years old, so at 85 years old, she estimates she’s been playing for over 70 years. Her mother and grandmother also played the organ. She started playing for both churches when “somebody told somebody who told somebody, and they called me,” because the Enterprise Community Congregational Church needed someone to play for Sunday service.

She plays on a Baldwin organ at St. Patrick’s Church and on a Rogers manual organ at the Community Church, which she says is “a nice instrument.” She said the pipe organ is her favorite, which she learned to play at church as a youth.

During her youth, in church, the church organist would pick Nesbitt to do the prelude and then the first hymn, sort of “easing into it, “ she said.

Nesbitt grew up about 30 miles outside Baltimore, Maryland, and has played for churches in Oregon and Washington. She was raised a Presbyterian but converted to the Episcopalian faith shortly after she and her husband, John, were married. Her daughter, Katy Nesbitt, is the priest at St. Patrick’s Episcopalian Church in Enterprise.

Ellen Nesbitt plays the prelude and the postlude on the organ at the Community Church and the hymns on the piano. She said this is the way Gail Swart did it. Nesbitt said she and Swart, who died in 2022, used to “meet and chat about music in the produce section of Safeway.” She said she was a great admirer of Swart and said there is a picture of Swart at the church, probably one of the last ones of her taken before she died, of her playing the piano with candles lit on either side.

“It’s just lovely,” she said.

Nesbitt, who lives in Enterprise with her husband, said the Community Church will soon have a new minister, and she still would like to play there because she likes doing it. She said she has done quite a bit of playing on an interim basis, filling in for people who are sick or on vacation.

Asked how the music is selected, whether by the minister or priest of the church, or by the music or choir director, Nesbitt says it can go either way. She said she has experienced it both ways, where the minister will select hymns that fit the scripture or the music director selects the hymns for the service.

Nesbitt started her education at St. Mary’s Junior College of Maryland, which she attended for two years. She completed her degree at Central Washington College, which is now Central Washington University, in Ellensburg, earning a degree in home economics and elementary education.

With a full schedule of church services, one might wonder when she finds the time to practice. It helps that, by her own estimation, she is a “pretty good sight reader.”