‘She played for her own funeral.’ Coast organist who held a world record dies at 99
It wasn’t the typical funeral for Ida Mae Cumbest, 99, who died March 9 and whose long life was celebrated Sunday.
“She played for her own funeral,” said her son, Mark Cumbest.
“I’ll never forget that,” said Kevin Trantham, pastor of Caswell Springs United Methodist Church, where Ida Mae played piano and organ for 75 years.
In 2013, when she was 92, a videographer recorded Cumbest playing her favorite hymns at her church.
With some editing by Trantham and Doug Wall, minister of music at the church, the video was projected on a screen during her funeral, with the lyrics so the congregation could sing along.
“As we close this book on her life, she plays one last time,” is how Trantham put it.
She had recorded her personal favorite, “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name,” along with beloved hymns like “In the Garden,” “It is Well with My Soul” and “Jesus Loves Me.”
She was 99, just 3 months shy of her 100th birthday, when she died.
Cumbest said in a recorded interview that her mother taught her to play the piano when she was about 6 years old.
“I wanted to do that because I looked forward to the time I’d play for church,” she said.
She started playing at Caswell Springs church in 1942 and continued until 2017, taking the Guinness Record in 2011 as the longest-tenured church pianist and organist in the world.
That record held for five years until 2016, according to a Sun Herald account, when a woman from a church in Ohio showed she had played for 80 years.
Her son totaled all the weddings, funerals and church services Cumbest played and came with more than 11,000, including the 58 years she played at baccalaureate services for Wade High School, later East Central, and the 56 years of music provided at Salem Methodist Camp Meeting.
By all accounts, “She never asked for payment,” her pastor said, although several times she was offered pay.
“That’s such a foreign concept in this day and time,” Trantham said.
Those who attended her funeral told Mark and Brent Cumbest their mother was “the kindest, most generous, most loving, most pleasant, person any of them have ever known,” Mark said.
Her husband, James, died in 2012, after 63 years of marriage, and she had four grandchildren.
She also taught piano lessons to countless students in the Moss Point area.
She was a good cook, Mark Cumbest said, and “a true Southern woman,” who make her own recipes for carrot cake and pecan pie and turned out homemade biscuits and cornbread.
Besides taking care of her family and keeping a very clean house, “Her hobby and her calling was music,” he said.
To honor her love of music and years of service her family has established the Ida Mae Cumbest Foundation for Music. Those who would like to make a tax-deductible contribution can send it to 17725 Highway 63, Moss Point, MS, 39562.
