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Ilmar Kuljus claims he is retired.

“Well, somewhat retired,” he said.

Kuljus has retired more than once in his 76 years. But the distinguished-looking man who has taught accordion to several hundred students in Spokane during his 54-year career just doesn’t seem to make his retirements stick.

Kuljus and his wife, Dolly, now divide their time between their homes in Arizona and on Lake Coeur d’Alene. But Kuljus still teaches students here in Spokane and in Sun City Grand, near Phoenix.

“I really didn’t intend to take students once I moved to Arizona,” he said, “but a few people there heard of me and asked for lessons.

Kuljus recently sold his Accordia-Nova studio and accordion shop to Steve Bruchman, whose daughter Monique Rosenthal was one of Kuljus’ star pupils. She recently returned to Spokane after studying accordion as a scholarship student at the Conservatorio Antonio Vivaldi in Cassele di Altivole, Italy.

Bruchman persuaded Kuljus to “help out” with the studio. In addition to Kuljus and Rosenthal. Accordia-Nova’s teachers will include Sammy Thomas, another Kuljus protégé.

Thomas, a 17-year-old accordionist from Cheney, will be the first American to be admitted to the International Accordion Association’s Coupe Mondiale Competition in Norway in the contest’s under-32-year-old division.

Kuljus’ interest as a teacher and player has been the accordion as a classical instrument, miles away from the oompah sounds of polkas or banalities of the Lawrence Welk tradition.

Kuljus was born in Estonia and began playing the accordion when he was 5.

“My father was one of those fellows who could play any instrument by ear,” Kuljus said. “So when I was very young, I started to play music, too.

“Our family had survived the first Russian occupation of Estonia and then the German occupation in 1940,” Kuljus said. “But in 1944, when the Russian came back into Estonia, we knew we had to leave.

“If you were a property owner or had a good education, you were likely to find yourself headed for Siberia, as so many of our family and friends did.”

The Kuljus family took a freighter to Germany, where the 14-year-old Ilmar and his father were forcibly inducted into the German infantry. As the war ended, the Kuljus family lived in a refugee camp near Nurnburg, where Kuljus played the accordion for food.

In 1950 the family immigrated to the United States, sponsored by a Minnesota farm owner. He stayed on the farm for a couple of months, then moved to Seattle, hoping to enter the University of Washington and become a doctor.

“My family had very little money, and one day I was walking and happed to pass an accordion school,” Kuljus said, “I thought, ‘I could do that.’

“So I went in, and they gave me a job. It turned out to be very lucrative for me.”

Kuljus describes the 1950s and ‘60s as “the accordion’s Golden Age in the U.S.”

“GIs coming home from Europe had heard the accordion and liked it and wanted to learn to play,” he said. “A friend of mine and I decided we wanted to start our own accordion school, but we couldn’t do it in Seattle because we would be competing with our employer.

“In 1952, we came to Spokane which, back then, was the hottest accordion town in the country. In those days, I always had 50 or 60 students.”

After the advent of rock ‘n’ roll, interest in the accordion plummeted.

“You couldn’t earn a living just teaching accordion anymore,” Kuljus said.

He returned to college, first to Eastern Washington State University, then called Eastern Washington State Teachers College, then to the University of Washington, where he earned a master’s degree in languages. While he continued to teach accordion, he taught languages in the Spokane Public Schools for 26 years before retiring in 1993.

Through his retirements, Kuljus has continued to teach accordion, producing young virtuosos who have won regional, nation and international competitions. He supervised the study at Whitworth College of Patricia Bartell, who is Spokane’s first and – so far – only musician to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in accordion performance.

What’s next for Kuljus in retirement?

“Well, I continue to adjudicate accordion competitions, and I teach at the Oregon State Summer Camp for Accordionists at Silver Falls,” he said, adding, “and this fall I will start teaching accordion over an interactive Internet connection that Steve Bruchman is helping me set up.

“But I’ll still fly up here to Spokane occasionally to have lessons, as well.”

That’s the way retirement works for Ilmar Kuljus.