Woman with two fingers realizes dream to play organ

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Alinda Murphy would often stop outside a music store and peer in at the organs that she wanted to learn how to play.

But then she would remember her hands and turn away.

Murphy, a bank examiner, has a hereditary condition, ectrodactyly, that gave her only one finger on each hand and no thumbs.

But her mother, Icy Gines, had always told Murphy and her sister, Joan Deans, who was also born with the same condition, not to shy away from anything they wanted to do because of their hands.

"I always told them, 'Use your hands. Use your hands,"' Gines said.

Each time Murphy, 44, turned away from the windows at Schmitt Music in Independence, she promised to return and try again.

Doctors told Gines, who also has ectrodactyly, that her children would have a 50-50 chance of developing the congenital condition in which the bones in the hands and feet fuse together.

When Murphy was born, Gines said, "I cried and cried and cried. "Then I thought to myself, I could teach her. I could teach her all the things no one taught me."

Like how to crack an egg and separate the yolk from the white, how to hold a pen and write, how to tie shoes, "how to meet people, be independent, have self-respect."

So Murphy went inside the organ store just before Thanksgiving, after nearly two years of thinking about it.

Eight weeks later, in mid-January, Murphy perched on the bench of an organ, showing how far she had progressed.

She had set up the background rhythm and orchestration with an Italian beat, then touched off chord progressions with her left finger while her right finger played the melody.

"Did you hear that?" she said, snapping a look back at her teacher. "A G-seventh!"

The maneuver required her to press separate keys with her left hand -- which she did by using the heel of her hand while stretching her finger.