Roberta’s Story

Roberta was born in 1948 in upstate New York and moved to the Los Angeles area after high school. She earned a B.A. in Music History and a Master’s degree in Church Music from the University of Southern California, where she became a skilled organist and harpist.

After Roberta married Richard in 1976, they moved to Portland, Oregon and together they founded Bond Organ Builders, Inc.  She served as President, CFO and architectural designer over the years. She took drawing, drafting and design classes and used those skills to create most of the organ cases for the company’s 36 new instruments. Bond Organ builders restored and built many of the treasured pipe organs in the Pacific Northwest. Go into any church in the Portland area that has a pipe organ, and it will have been built or restored by Bond.

Roberta was talented in many areas and had a special way of finding beauty in everything she did. In 1978, Roberta became the organist and choir director at Bethlehem Lutheran Church and served there until 2002. She sang as a soprano in the Trinity Episcopal Cathedral Choir and the Bach Cantata Choir for many years. She was a certified master gardener and the food she cooked often came from her own garden. 

Roberta loved calligraphy and was a long time PSC member and beloved friend in the Portland community. She studied calligraphy at the Multnomah Arts Center with Christine Colasurdo and was known for her beautiful, precise lettering in her local Weathergrams group.