Floyd A. Sayler

Floyd Sayler, a pianist, was born in Maple Creek, Saskatchewan, Canada, one of six children born to Louis and Martha Baumbach Sayler. He was the only child to pursue a career in music. He was raised in a home where there was a lot of singing and was taught by his sister at an early age. At age twelve he started lessons on piano which continued through high school and college levels.

During his junior year at Okanagan Academy in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada, he decided he wanted to pursue a career in music. Following graduation in 1952, he enrolled at Walla Walla College, now University, as a music major, where he studied music for a year and a summer, taking piano lessons from Sterling Gernet and Janet Miller. He later attended the Kelowna School of Music and the Banff School of Fine Arts and obtained an Associateship Diploma from the Royal Conservatory of Music, University of Toronto.

Sayler has taught music privately for most of his career. He taught at Okanagan Academy in the 1950s and at Fountain View Academy in 1980.

He has spoken through letters to the church's primary publication, the Review and Herald, about his beliefs on the importance of both the passive and active qualities of faith and the relationship between the spirit and breath of life in man. Most recently he wrote an article, "The Human Mind, God's Masterpiece of Creation," published in the August 2011 Adventist World-NAD, now the church's primary publication. He wrote the human brain's ability to master the complex task of preparing and then presenting music with all of its nuances for performance from memory surpasses that of the most sophisticated computer.

He continued by stating that in accomplishing this task, both the conscious (preparation) and subconscious (performance) elements of the brain are strongly interrelated - a process that results in either a flawed or superlative presentation of the music. He concludes the article by observing that the many conscious decisions we constantly make in every aspect of life will subconsciously be reflected in our personality and character, the only thing that we will take from this life into the next.

Sayler presently resides in Oliver, British Columbia, Canada.

ds/2011

Source: Information provided by Floyd Sayler, September 2011; The Adventist World - NAD, August 2011, 20, 21; The Review and Herald, 24 October 1974, 3; 23 October 1975,3; 6 July 1978, 2.