When Bruce Vander Schel laid his eyes on the black, grand piano before him, the West Music instrument repairman said there wasn’t much he could do with what was offered to repair it.

The Iowa City Public Library told Vander Schel to do what he could with $950.

Vander Schel received the piano on June 15, 2005, and finished it about a month later.

By the time he was finished, he put about 47 hours and $2,312 worth of work into restoring the library’s piano — all for about $950.

“Truthfully, I could have done twice as much work as I did,” he said.

The piano was moved to the Iowa City Senior Center during construction on the library’s expansion. When that wrapped up, Vander Schel said the piano was pushed back down Linn Street to the library.

During its return home, Vander Schel said the piano fell off the dolly “and just got giant chunks taken out of it.” To fix it, Vander Schel said someone used black Bondo to fill in the gashes.

“If I would have stopped at the $950 figure, I would have given them back a piano that was still very much unsightly,” he said.

His drive for excellent workmanship inspired him to do it, but Vander Schel said something else motivated him to go above and beyond.

“I sort of figured that it’s kind of a community project in a way,” he said. “Our store, we’ve been in town for 50, 60 years and we feel like we’re part of the community, and the people I work with and work for would want it in some sort of reasonable shape.”

Iowa City officials later sent Vander Schel a thank you letter to let him know his extra effort on the piano was appreciated.

“If there was a project at City Park, would you leave it half done and then walk away … or would you finish it up?” he asked.

— Mike McWilliams

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