Along The Way Blog #Along the Winding Road

Sometimes we don't recognize the significance of a moment until years later. 

At the time, I thought I was asking a simple question. 

I knew Ken, but Ken was not simply another man I happened to know in Somerset. He was one of those people whose name carried some weight in the community.

Ken had served as Somerset's state representative from 1969 through 1980. He was an insurance agent and a businessman. He and his wife, Rita, operated their businesses out of an eighteenth-century house that was part of the historic landscape of Somerset.

But Ken was more than his résumé. 

He was an entertainer.

Ken and his barbershop quartet, Heart and Soul, were well known around Somerset. Their harmonies were exceptional. They didn't simply sing four-part harmony; they were four-part harmony. And the entertainment was real. When Heart and Soul performed, people didn't just hear good music. They enjoyed themselves.

Ken had that kind of presence. 

He was one of those characters who became part of the fabric of a community. 

If you lived around Somerset long enough, you knew Ken. 

And if you heard Heart and Soul sing, you remembered them. 

But titles, accomplishments, and even musical talent don't really explain Ken. 

Service does.

Ken had a way of being involved in his community that made him more than a businessman, former state representative, or entertainer. He seemed to know everybody, and everybody seemed to know Ken. His connection to Somerset wasn't merely professional. He had invested himself in the people around him. 

That was Ken.

I remember one night when the Roof Garden Barbershop Chorus was singing the National Anthem at the AAABA playoffs at Point Stadium in Johnstown. 

We sang it beautifully. Then we stayed for the game. And then the skies opened. 

It wasn't a gentle summer shower. 

It was a downpour.

I got completely soaked. Everything in my wallet was soaked, too—money, cards, everything. It looked like it had gone through a washing machine. 

Ken didn't hesitate. 

He told me to get into his Cadillac. 

So there I was, dripping wet, climbing into Ken's Cadillac while he simply went about taking care of somebody who needed a ride. 

Who does that? 

Guys like Ken. 

That's the part of Ken I don't want to lose.

The titles will eventually fade. The political office becomes a line in a history book. Even the recordings and memories of Heart and Soul will become harder for people to find. 

But I'll remember the Cadillac. 

I'll remember standing there soaking wet.

I'll remember Ken opening the door and telling me to get in. 

Because that's what service looked like when I knew Ken. 

It wasn't a speech. 

It wasn't a title. It was a man seeing somebody who needed help and simply helping him. 

And one evening, I asked that man about a song.

It was Holy Thursday, and the choir had sung something that had caught my attention. 

I didn't know the title, but I wanted to hear it again. 

So I asked Ken if he knew what it was called. 

He could have simply said, "I'll find out." Instead, Ken went to the choir loft – in a different building – to find the sheet music. 

He came back and showed it to me. 

The song was Called to the Supper of the Lamb by Tony Alonso. 

That little act tells you something about Ken.

He didn't make a production of it. He didn't tell me how busy he was or how many other things he had to do. 

Somebody had asked him a question. 

So he went looking for the answer. 

I bought the CD. 

And I listened to it. 

A lot. 

There was something about that music that kept drawing me back. I didn't understand yet what it was doing in my life. I only knew that I loved the sound of it, and somehow the music had gotten under my skin. 

Then, a few weeks later, I saw an announcement in the parish bulletin: 

New choir members wanted.

I showed up before the Wednesday evening rehearsal.

Lori, the organist, and Karen, the choir director, greeted me. I introduced myself and told them I wanted to audition. 

They both laughed. 

Karen looked at me and said, "We take anyone willing to sing." 

So much for my audition. 

I joined the choir.

I didn't know it then, but that decision would become part of a much larger story. 

And Ken wasn't finished. 

Later, he invited me to a guest night with the Roof Garden Barbershop Chorus. He thought I might enjoy it and wanted me to come see what they did. 

I wasn't sure. 

Another choir member advised me to accept the invitation. 

His reasoning was pretty straightforward: Ken wasn't going to let it go until I did. 

He knew Ken. 

So I went. 

And I fell in love with barbershop music.

There was something completely different about it – the harmonies, the sound of it, the fellowship, the sheer joy of making music together. 

I joined the Roof Garden Barbershop Chorus and became part of that family. I stayed with the chorus until I entered formation for Holy Orders. 

Looking back now, I can see something I couldn't possibly have seen then. 

I thought I had asked Ken for the name of a song. But Ken didn't just give me a title. He went and found the music. 

A few weeks later, I walked into a choir rehearsal. Then Ken nudged me toward another kind of singing. And eventually, music became part of my life in ways I could never have anticipated. 

Maybe that's one of the things I've learned about God's invitations. They don't always arrive looking like invitations. Sometimes they look like a question. Sometimes they look like a sheet of music carried back from a choir loft. Sometimes they look like a bulletin announcement. And sometimes they look like Ken, telling you about a barbershop chorus and refusing to take no for an answer. 

I didn't know where any of it was leading. 

I only knew that I kept saying yes. 

Ken has since been called home to the Lord. 

Rita still mourns him. 

And I hope I never forget him. 

Because Ken meant a great deal to me. 

When I think of him now, I don't first think about the political office he held, the businesses he ran, or even the music he made. 

I think about the man. 

The man who went looking for a piece of sheet music because I asked him about a song. The man who opened the door of his Cadillac for a soaking-wet chorus member without giving it a second thought. 

The man who wouldn't let me get away with declining an invitation to sing. 

That's the Ken I remember. 

And somewhere along that winding road, I began to understand that the music wasn't merely something I was singing. 

It was becoming part of the way God was teaching me to listen.

Following Truth Wherever He Leads.

Years ago, I searched high and low for Sen-Sen. My father always carried a little pack in the pocket of his suit coat, and as a boy I loved them. Eventually they disappeared from store shelves. I bought boxes of them whenever I found them, knowing they wouldn't last forever. 

Today they're gone, but the memories remain.

Looking back, I realize I was searching for more than candy. I was trying to reconnect with a time and a person I loved.

Looking at an old family photo triggered a memory of something else I have been searching for. A hymn. Actually, a recording of that hymn. A hymn I heard for the first time as a child.  Isn’t it funny how our senses work. We see a picture, we remember a particular taste, and then a sound.

For me, that progression led me to a precious memory. That old black and white photo got me thinking about what we might have been doing back then. My siblings and I are clearly dressed in our Sunday best. It’s 8:15, I’m guessing in the morning, because at that age we’d have been in bed if it was evening. There must have been some important occasion that my parents wanted to memorialize.

Once a month, we traveled from Greenville, Pennsylvania, to Buffalo, New York, where Apostle John W. Fendt conducted District Services at Kleinhans Music Hall. Congregations from across the district gathered there, and the combined district choir filled that magnificent hall with music unlike anything I'd ever heard.

Before the service began, the choir would sing. There were no microphones, no praise band, no stage lighting – just dozens of well-trained voices, accompanied by a magnificent pipe organ, filling Kleinhans Music Hall with harmonies that seemed to come from every direction.

One of the songs the choir sang was composed particularly for this kind of choir. In 1922, Carrie B. Adams composed a choral anthem based on Psalm 125. I found and purchased a copy of The Choir Herald where it first appeared.

Each time I hear the words of that Psalm, I am taken back to hearing the New Apostolic Church Buffalo District Choir sing, They That Trust In The Lord. Particularly the section of the song where the choir stops and a trio of voices begins.

The full choir stops; a trio steps out from the choir and up to a single microphone. The organ plays and two women and a man begin: 

“I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord.” 

The voices blend as one. 

The harmony flawless. 

The timing impeccable. 

When the full choir resumes, they sing powerfully, 

“Let the people praise thee, praise thee oh God!”

I can still remember how the final chord resounded in that hall and in my soul. 

I can still hear it now. 

I searched for years for a recording of that song. 

I eventually found a recording on YouTube.

The video was grainy, the sound was poor, and the choir... well, let's just say they weren't the NAC Buffalo District Choir. I listened anyway. Not because it matched my memory, but because it reminded me that some things are too deeply woven into our lives to be recaptured by a recording.

As a younger man, I searched for an obsolete breath mint. 

Years later, I searched for an old hymn.

One could never be found again. 

The other, I discovered, had never really been lost. The words of Psalm 125 are still with me, and so is the trust in God they planted in the heart of a little boy. 

Following Truth Wherever He Leads

A "Wink of Providence"

I have been working on another book, One Tin Soldier. While working on a genealogy, I discovered so many mysteries about my ancestors, that it led to me creating a work of historical fiction. As I wrote this post, I received one of those unexpected ‘winks of Providence.’ I learned that Kleinhans Music Hall had been designed by a pair of Finnish architects. Eliel and Eero Saarinen. Father and son. As someone who would eventually come to appreciate his own Finnish heritage, that discovery made this memory even sweeter.