MILFORD – In 1985 Ben Mague came here to the First Congregational Church and built an organ. At the time, the church was also in need of someone to play the organ, so Mague took the position.

Thirty-four years later no one is surprised the organ is still here – tracker pipe organs can last 100 years. But for a music director 34 years is “an unheard of length of time,” says church historian Bonnie Gondola.

Mague is president of the Andover Organ Company in Lawrence, Mass. and he is well known throughout New England as a organ master and musician, Gondola said, “as well as our beloved choir director.”

Now he is 70 and will retire as music director on June 9, the day the church will hold a celebratory concert in his honor.

The concert, at 2 p.m. will be followed by a classic afternoon tea of savory and sweets in the Parish House. Both the concert and the tea will be open to the public.

Kathy Mague sings with the church choir, and the couple live in Londonderry and have been coming to Milford every week for Sunday services and for Thursday choir practice.

Ben, who is not retiring from the organ company, says he will now have more weekend hours to work on their seaside retirement home, no far from where he grew up in Downeast Maine.

“After 50 years as an organist,” he said, “my fingers are not as good as perhaps they could be. Age is taking its tool, and it is wise to go out at the top of your game.”

On June 9 he will play a final duet with the church’s resident flutist, Christa Wickham .

Wickham is also a choir member and the junior choir director, and she said she’s learned a lot from him.

“He’s just amazing,” she said. “He doesn’t say much, but he’s very intuitive in the way he interprets music, and in the way he asks us to perform.”

For example, he asks the choir “to sing with vim and vigor,” she said. And “he definitely knows his audience … he reads people well.”

Fellow choir member Andrea Guidoboni said Mague, a fellow Mainer who “has many of the fine ‘Yankee’ qualities that I have admired over the years: the dry humor, the understated attitude, the formidable work ethic and the quiet strength. His devotion to the church was remarkable and something that he inherited.”

Ben’s parents, she said, “would often bring the whole family to spend Saturday night at the church they served in Maine if they heard that there was to be a snowstorm on Sunday. His mother was a gifted composer, and we hope to sing a couple of her works at the gala concert in June.

“Most of all, I admired Ben’s ability to inspire the choir to do the very best music that we could, even though most of us are far below his level,” she said. “He never made us feel awkward or inferior and often said that we need to work with what we are given – such a wonderful approach to life, I think. At times, he was given a total of five women in the choir, three of whom were in their 70’s, but with his help, we always made a decent showing.”

Kathy Cleveland may be reached at 673-3100 or kcleveland@cabinet.com.