The patient has been ill for several months, and is finally getting help from a skilled surgeon. Piece by piece, part by part, the patient is being taken apart, carefully and lovingly repaired and put back together.

The doctor and his helpers are using no fancy tools or machinery just pocketknives, scalpels, scissors, glue, cotton-tip applicators and sheepskin leather.

This operation, which would normally cost about $15,000, is being done for free by Dr. Edd Simmons and a small group of volunteer helpers. Their patient is the room-sized old pipe organ in Fayetteville First United Methodist Church's chapel.

"I love to hear pipe organ music," is Simmons' explanation for his service. In fact, this "semi-retired," two-days-a-week dentist is a member of the local chapter of the American Theatre Organ Society, and is currently repairing three organs on a volunteer basis. "I love to sit and listen," he said.

The repair jobs have to be done totally by hand. "No machine will do it," Simmons said. "That's the reason pipe organs are so expensive to repair."

He restored and installed First Methodist's organ in 1979, after the church purchased it from another Methodist church in Chamblee. It was built around 1925 by the M.P. Mollër Co. for a Lutheran church in North Carolina, Simmons said.

When Hurricane Opal brought heavy storms to the area, leakage soaked some of the organ's large wooden chests and ruined some of the leather which is integral in making sound.

"Some of the notes were not playing because of the water damage," said Simmons' wife, Norma. "The organ was really needing attention. It had not been played much for the last few months."

A piano has temporarily taken its place in the old sanctuary, now called the chapel. There the church holds its contemporary 9:50 a.m. Sunday worship services and special events like weddings. A larger pipe organ is used in the church's main sanctuary, which was built in late 1986. Still, the old organ is missed.

"Of late, it's begun to get a little sick," agreed the doctor. "Anything that's wrong with it, we're going to take apart, fix it, and put it back together."

A couple of afternoons a week, the couple and a few other church members meet in the choir room, which is next to the little room that houses all the organ's "guts." For three months, they are slowly, tediously, spending three hours or so at a time unscrewing the wooden chests to get to the ruined leather pads and other parts.

Among other repairs, pocketknives are used to peel away water damaged parts, and new circles are cut out of thin sheepskin leather with scissors to be glued in place of old ones. The circular pads are part of the valves, to which the pipes connect, that allow pressurized air through to create the notes. The instrument is a "four-rank" organ, meaning it has four sets of the pipes, which vary from the size of a pencil to 16 feet tall and 10 inches in diameter. Some larger organs have pipes as tall as 32 feet.

The organ runs by a differential in wind pressure, Simmons said. "The leather acts to open and close valves under the pipes when you press the keys." He said a big, three-horsepower turbine fan run by an electric motor creates the wind pressure. The air resonating through the pipes is what gives the instrument its characteristic tone.

"I'm always amazed at the ingenuity that went into making a pipe organ in the first place," Norma said.

Volunteer Charles Seman, who is a "househusband" in Clayton County, said the work is something to do after he has finished his housework for the day, and that it has been "a learning experience for me." He added he wants to "sit and hear what it sounds like when we're finished."

Retired pilot Bryant Balkcum of the Starr's Mill area, who was involved in the installation of the organ's pipes so many years ago, has also been helping. "I'm just in the help mode," he said. "These things kind of fascinate me."

Norma Simmons said Edd had an organ at home for years that he enjoyed working on. Right now he is fixing three organs at once: the church's organ, one at a Methodist church in Grant Park, and a large theatre organ at a high school in Dekalb County.

Theatre organs, he said, are louder than church organs and have "toys," including orchestra horns and bells, whistles, drums, cymbals and auto horns. They were used in their prime to accompany silent movies.