Justin Cook | The Roanoke Times

Diane Ford is the organist at First Baptist Church in Radford. She started the position as a junior music education major at Radford University in 1978.

RADFORD -- Her face has a look of determination, and her poise paints a portrait of a woman who is classy and intelligent as her fingers dance across the keyboards of a Rodgers organ inside First Baptist Church. Some people may only know the organist by the back of her head, as the organ faces the choir.

Diane Ford will have played the organ inside this church for 30 years on Oct. 1, a position she started as a junior music education major at Radford University in 1978. The thing she says has changed the most throughout the years? She now has to wear glasses.

"It's just my way of being a minister to my church," Ford said. "People ask me if I ever get a chance to worship because I'm always up here playing, and I reply that I worship through playing my music."

Kent Taylor, associate pastor, said people might not realize that Ford is more than just the church's organist.

"Her role here is far more," he said. "She works with the children, too -- she gives of herself so much through her music ministry and also to Christian education."

However, the children at First Baptist Church are not the only ones Ford teaches. She is also a music teacher in the public school system, working out of Belview and Auburn elementary schools.

"I just enjoy seeing their faces light up when they sing and play instruments because I know it's something they can carry with them the rest of their lives," Ford said.

The organist began her experience with music in elementary school when she began piano lessons. She started taking organ lessons as a sophomore in high school, and she shared the love of the instrument with her father, Richard Tomlinson, who played in his Roanoke church for 37 years. Ford said she still enjoys playing the organ at First Baptist Church with what she calls an "awesome choir," with many people who were there when she began attending the church.

"We have a really good group," she said. "Kay Ellerman, our minister of music, and I work really hard to make sure the music goes with the scripture and sermon for each Sunday, and I couldn't do what I do without her and the choir."

The church will honor Ford's contributions with a concert Sept. 28 at the church, but the congregation will also likely remember former pastor Joe Burton, who was instrumental in getting the organ for the church but died in April 2000, just before the new organ was installed that summer.

"It's bittersweet," Ford said. "He put a lot of hard work into it, but then he wasn't here to see and hear it before he passed."

Ford does not have any plans to leave the church she has called home for so long, and she said her reason for staying involves more than just knowing how difficult it is for churches to find organists or being in the church where she raised her daughter.

"It's like family, and you just stick by your family," she said. "This church is what I love, so I'm going to stay."