The Oboe Woman

Everything comes from someplace. As much as this is probably an oversimplification, it is true. Whatever you're looking at was made somewhere. You just didn't give it any thought that some kind of factory, person or person at a factory was turning out whatever it is you're looking at.

We know the big stuff is made somewhere. Cars, planes and ships. And that's the short list. But did anyone ever give much thought to where oboes come from? Once you look it up, or remember what an oboe is, you might not really care where they come from. An oboe is pictured above, a musical instrument most commonly found in classical music orchestras. It resembles a clarinet, and when properly played has a rich, warm sound.

And as of March 1, there is one less master craftsman oboe maker, as Paul Laubin, 88 has passed away in Peekskill, New York. He was found dead in his workshop in the evening, having passed away during the day in his workshop. 

Making oboes the old fashioned way, completely by hand from rosewood and grenadilla is what Paul did, just like his father Alfred. Both gentlemen were professional oboists, with Paul having play in the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Alfred took up making his own instruments when he was not satisfied with the imperfections in the ones he used for playing.  

Together they made oboes in their garage in Scarsdale, New York, a garage being the place where you'd expect a master craftsman to turn out his made-by-hand product.

That is until they needed a little more space to turn out their yearly output of 100 oboes. In 1958 they moved to a clarinet factory in Long Island City, Queens.

I grew up in Queens in that era and knew Long Island City to be home to several factories, some of them large, like Eagle Electrical Supply, Ronzoni and Mueller's spaghetti, Silvercup bread bakery, Breyers ice cream, Swingline Staples, Sunshine Bakery, Chiclets/Black Jack gum.

There were also lots of smaller and one story machine shops like Sklar surgical instruments, but I would have never thought there was a clarinet factory nestled amongst all those industrial streets and loading docks.

The presence of a clarinet factory probably meant there was a listing in the Queens Yellow Pages under Clarinets–Manufacturers, as opposed to possible retail stores that sold clarinets. What a treasure. You would need some old phone directories to see if the oboe guys had their own listing inside the clarinet factory, sharing the same address.

And like any business, there were growing pains. Alex Vadukul in today's informative NYT obituary for Paul Laubin, tells us that his father Alfred built the first Laubin oboe as an experiment, melting down his wife's silverware to make the keys.

Paul's mother, Lillian, Alfred's wife, is described as a "homemaker." Decidedly a homemaker who had to give up her set of good silverware and for a while, or maybe even everafter, had to set out the stainless steel flatware for the holidays so that Alfred could make a better oboe.

Behind any set of inventors and tinkerers is a good woman who made the sacrifices.

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