Arlene grew up in a parsonage with two ministers, her father and
her mother. It was church music that got her attention.
She loved playing the piano for church,
small groups, and for her own enjoyment.
At Warner Pacific College she
studied piano and organ and sang in the a cappella choir and the
oratorio society. While in college she found her calling as an
elementary school teacher and as Rex’s partner for life.
Together they raised their three children and added a fourth one
during his high school years.
Four grandchildren are her delight
along with volunteering as a Stephen Minister, gardening,
bicycling with Rex, reading, and traveling. Her natural alto
voice skips along above the other three voices, adding the
glistening tenor notes. |
Rex grew up
on a farm in Indiana.
His father and mother began singing together in high
school and were called to sing at weddings, church revivals,
funerals, and in quartets and trios. Singing was as natural to
him as breathing. An aunt said she could hear him singing above
the noise of the tractor as he cultivated the corn.
At Warner Pacific College in Portland, Oregon, he majored
in voice and sang in their oratorio society.
It was during these college years that he met Arlene, a
pianist. He first
asked her to accompany him as he practiced and found courage to
ask her for a date. They have been making music together ever
since. He is the father of four children and grandfather to
four. Rex is a
retired elementary school teacher, a bicyclist, and a volunteer
repairing inner city homes.
His clear natural tenor voice draws this quartet’s other
three voices together in sweet harmony.
|
Since she
was a little girl, Grace has loved to sing, and she did so,
usually as a second soprano or an alto during her high school
years in Iowa and in Washington State. She also played the piano
and trombone. At
Pacific Lutheran College, in Tacoma, she was interested in
auditioning for the Choir
of the West, but realized that it would be difficult to
manage both the choir’s busy schedule and spring tour in
addition to pursuing a premed course. She did play her trombone
in the college’s band and took voice lessons for one semester as
a graduation gift from her parents. Now, years later, as a
retired pediatrician, she still loves to sing, and she does so
regularly in her church choir, either as alto or tenor. As one
of the Gentlefolk, however, she took the only part that was
left, baritone, and decided to give it a try. It’s a crazy part,
but she enjoys it, as she joins the other three members, her
husband, Fred, and friends, Arlene and Rex, in making harmony. |
Born into a musical family, Fred never could
get the hang of playing the piano and failed miserably with the
bass viol .
However, with the ability to read
music he found himself in a variety of choirs and choruses as a
child, relegated to providing harmony as an alto, never the
soloist. He was a tenor for about two weeks as an adolescent and
then his voice plummeted to the cellar of the vocal register. At
the College of Puget Sound he was a member of the
Adelphian Choir.
In 1967 he discovered barbershop style singing and realized -
for the first time in his life - that he could contribute to a
quartet in equal measure with the other three voices. In medical
school he fell in love with his classmate, Grace.
A long happy marriage and six
children attest to the fact that they can make harmony together
as a duo. At retirement he was happy to leave his beeper at the
hospital and now has time to enjoy being the bass of the
Gentlefolk. |