Religion: Case of the Missing Organist

Tall, gangling Lawrence K. Whipp, 52, was an impeccable ornament of Paris’ prewar American colony. He was rather aloof, deeply religious. For 20 years he was organist, choirmaster and lay reader at the Pro-Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, the Protestant Episcopal Church’s mainstay in France and a pillar of the American colony’s social façade. Last week the whereabouts of Larry Whipp were a baffling mystery, and friends in Paris were combing his record for clues.

In the spring of 1940, when chic society disintegrated at the approaching threat of German boots, Trinity’s Dean Frederick W. Beekman fled to the U.S. Organist Whipp, left in charge, moved into the deanery to run the church. He held services for the few remaining parishioners (he could not perform Holy Communion), baptized six children, buried 40 Americans, visited and comforted the sick.

A few days after Pearl Harbor, Larry Whipp was sitting in the dark in his study listening to a verboten BBC broadcast when the Gestapo came. He was expecting them. He had his bags and a pianist’s finger-exercising machine packed and waiting. Sadly he turned his beloved grey Gothic cathedral over to the German clergy to make into a Wehrmachtskirche. During the ten months of his imprisonment, he lived with comparative comfort in the American section of the Compiègne internment camp.

As the U.S. Army approached Paris, Organist Whipp returned to his church, got busy repairing broken windows and furniture, organizing and conducting services. In November he wrote to Dean Beekman: “I am old, thin and tired. . . . Come as soon as you can.” When the Dean arrived just before Christmas, Whipp greeted him jovially: “Take back your damned baby!”

Sunday, Feb.11 was a chill day of intermittent rain. In the dripping churchyard after service, Dean Beekman told his organist: “You never played hymns better.” Whipp thanked him, and cheerfully set off to lunch with friends at Auteuil.

The lunch was pleasant and friendly. Larry Whipp glowed with the news that his passport was ready for a holiday trip to the U.S. At 4 p.m. the organist put his grey soft hat on his balding head, picked up his neatly rolled umbrella and walked out into Auteuil’s gloomy Sunday twilight. No one has seen hide nor hair of him since.