By Rick Geffken
LITTLE SILVER – Those iconic summer sounds you hear every so often in Little Silver might remind you of Asbury Park’s famed merry-go-round. And why not? It’s probably Tom Billy’s 1923 Wurlitzer 146B carousel organ. He parks it outside his Willow Avenue house for the town’s Memorial Day parade and occasionally plays it in his garage for interested visitors. Or just when he feels like hearing it again.
Billy worked in the 1960s at the iconic carousel at the southern end of Asbury’s boardwalk. He restored this particular Wurlitzer music machine using original parts and a newly constructed wooden cabinet. These wonderful mechanical instruments make music via paper rolls slotted just so. Air is pumped through the holes and routed to a series of differently tuned pipes and tom-tom drums.
When Billy was 11 or 12 years old, his Rahway family rented a cottage in Seaside Heights where he first heard carousel organs. A few years later he heard one near Newark. “They would take me to Olympic Park in Irvington which had a big organ on the carousel. That really got me going. I said to myself ‘When I grow up, I have to have one.’ So, I did.” He bought a 1915 Adolph Ruth & Sons organ from Coney Island when he was 19. It sat unused at the famous Brooklyn amusement park for years before Billy hired Mike Kitner of Carlisle, Pennsylvania to get it running. Billy still calls the late Kitner “ ‘ The Monk of Organs.’ He was the best.” Billy still brings the Ruth organ to shows and special events.
Photo by Rick Geffken
After mustering out of the Army in 1971 – he served as a combat engineer in Vietnam – Billy began a series of jobs reflecting his passion for amusement parks. He repaired rides at Great Adventure in Jackson, then at the Asbury Park and Point Pleasant boardwalks for Holiday Playland and Funsville Amusements.
Billy’s wife, Marghi Odell, said, “He’s always done what he’s loved in life. How many of us can say that?”
Actually, she can. Michigan-native Odell had her own satisfying career before she married Billy. She was an airline hostess for both TransAmerica Airlines and on private corporate jets. “It wasn’t work, I loved it,” she said. The couple currently live in an 1877 Little Silver farmhouse she restored years ago.
Billy is one of very few people in New Jersey who still have these venerable machines. “I only know of a fella in south Jersey who works on organs and has a little collection,” he said before recalling that there is “another guy up in north Jersey.”
Billy also owns a “crank organ,” much like the type Italian immigrant men would play and push through city streets in the early 20th century, often with a live monkey attached. Billy enlisted Beth Dellapietro, an artist and scenic painter from Highlands, to paint it in a pattern remarkably reminiscent of rosewood inlaid laminates. Dellapietro also painted the beautiful forest scenes on Billy’s Wurlitzer.
Tom Billy retired from Naval Weapons Station Earle after 31 years working there as a brakeman, conductor and engineer on ammunition trains. The short haul railway traveled the 18 miles of tracks leading to the Navy pier in Sandy Hook Bay. He got that civilian Navy job because of his love of amusement rides. He had previously worked on the popular Pine Creek Railroad in Allaire State Park, living for six months in a yellow “Raritan River” caboose.
Billy is a longtime member of the Black River and Western Railroad in Ringoes where he volunteers to help with repairs and maintenance of vintage steam and diesel powered locomotives.
He also belongs to the Carousel Organ Association of America but doesn’t think he’ll be buying any more of these wonderful organs. They cost around $5,000 today, and, he said, “they need a lot of work. I don’t know if I really want to spend the money.”
Billy has rented his one-of-a-kind Ruth organ for years through his appropriately named Coney Island Music Company. He does it less frequently now, last towing it to a Young at Heart meeting at Red Bank’s Tower Hill Presbyterian Church in May. You’ll still have a chance to hear the revered Ruth organ when he brings it to Allaire State Park in Wall Township for the annual Fall Apple Festival Sept. 21.
