Deb Gordley feels music all around her – in her life, in her thoughts, in her bones – and she can’t imagine it being any other way.

Gordley, a secretary for Des Moines University’s Standardized Performance Assessment Laboratory, is one of about 60 members of the Des Moines Community Orchestra. She started practicing with the group 19 years ago. When she joined, she was a flute player, but she decided to learn the oboe to fill a need in the orchestra.

“Since 1963, I had wanted to play the oboe, but I learned the flute instead,” Gordley said. “There is something very dear about the flute, but the oboe is in my soul.”

Gordley was 30 years old when she joined the orchestra, and she estimates that she’s only missed a handful of group practices since then. Early on, she commuted to practices and lessons from her home in Chariton, while juggling family obligations as a single mother.

Gordley said she practices every day, and has done so for so long that she said she wouldn’t know what to do with herself if she wasn’t practicing. When she’s not preparing for a concert with the DMCO, she plays with local theater groups and at church. Her husband, Rich, is also a member of the orchestra, and she said music is a priority for both of them.

“Music returns everything that you put into it and more,” Gordley said. “The time I spend playing is a wonderful investment, and I can tell that I’m improving every year.”

Lynn Messina joined the DMCO about eight years ago. She began playing the viola in grade school, and she continued to play through high school and with a university concert band while she studied to be a pharmacist at Drake University.

Messina, a mother of four, said she “put playing on hold” for several years while her kids were younger. But since she started playing again regularly, she said the weekly practices help her re-energize.

“With four teenagers, you don’t get to much time to yourself,” said Messina, who works as a pharmacist for Mercy Medical Center-Des Moines. “It is nice to do something adult and something different from what you normally do all day.”

Like Messina, Greg Woolever started playing his instrument, the violin, at an early age and had a period of time in his life when he stopped playing. But Woolever’s time lapse was more extreme.

“I started playing when I was in fourth grade, as was the custom back in those days,” Woolever said. “I continued playing and taking lessons into junior high, but by ninth grade, I was the only boy left and the girls were getting really good. After ninth grade, I took up the guitar instead and pursued that instead.”

Woolever, who works as a technical writer and illustrator for Townsend Engineering Co., didn’t pick up a violin again until about 15 years ago, when by chance, one was discovered in a closet during a family gathering at a home of relative on his wife’s side of the family

“I was over 40 years old when I came face to face again with a violin, and my fondness and interest in it erupted immediately,” he said. “At first, I wondered if I even knew how to tune it and where the notes were. But when I picked it up, I realized that the basics had stayed with me. I was energized by that renewal.”

Woolever took a refresher course in the violin by enrolling in private lessons through Drake University’s community school of music. After a couple of years and with encouragement from his instructor, he joined the DMCO. He continued to take lessons for another four years after joining the orchestra.

“We all have different levels of expertise, and the music is generally challenging, but between dress rehearsal and performance time, somehow we always pull it together and we’ve each done the work we needed to do,” he said.

In addition to good music and good relationships with his fellow orchestra members, part of the reason Woolever enjoys the DMCO is the challenge that comes with it.

“Even in junior high, although I was sort of waning in my ability to suffer it socially, I have strong memories of when the music really gets rich and you’re sitting in the middle of it bearing down on your instrument and playing it for all it’s worth. It’s quite a thrill,” he said. “Every now and then we get to that point where it sends chills down our spines.”