---

Laugh at the little jobs, but blowing the pitch is more than tooting a little harmonica. There are hours of unflagging attention to the director and instantly identifying the key of every section of every song. It barely hints at the focus and dedication exemplified to our chorus by our featured pitch-blowing BACmen, Dick White.

Dick comes from a musical family to begin with. His dad, a pioneer radio technician, played saxophone, his mother and younger brother were active amateur singers and his older brother was a music teacher and a professional drummer with the Ralph Marterie band (shown here with the Duane Tovey band w/ Dick playfully sitting in on bongos).

When Dick was a young boy, his mother encouraged him to sing in Toledo, Ohio's largest Episcopal boy's choirs, at least until his voice changed and until he could benefit from the largess of church choir lessons. As a kid, he even got a small, but paid, singing part in a touring production of "The Man Who Came to Dinner" earning a whopping $3 per performance! Pretty big money the 30s. Who could blame him if he got a little taste of the secular music bug from it?

It wasn't until his college days, however, that his singing got its second life and his musical tastes took a new direction. In 1946, freshly out of the Navy, Dick returned to Denison University in Granville Ohio where had been attending before he was drafted into the war. He was studying advanced mathematics and physics and, one day, on a whim, entered a fraternity sponsored vocal quartet competition.

Winning second place at the fraternity competition, and singing songs of his quartet's own arranging, brought them gigs delivering "Sweetheart Serenades" (one of those archaic and probably extinct fraternity traditions involving "pinning one's best girl" and requiring an attending quartet). But the contest also brought him to the attention of the school's choir director, Herman Larson, who successfully encouraged him to join the University's Glee Club. There he discovered the finer points of vocal craft and inspired harmony in the songs arranged by the great Fred Waring

Following his graduation in 1949, armed with his BS in math and a minor is physics and after a two year stint in men's retail clothing (where he met his wife) he landed a job in Queens, New York doing defense work as an electrical engineer for Sylvania (sponsors of the TV show "Beat The Clock- hosted by "Roxanne", shown here with Dick for a PR shot). Eventually a change in jobs, to production management for Amperex/Philips Electronics in Hicksville locked him into a 31-year career.

It was there in Hicksville, in the early 70s, by the invitation of a co-worker that he first visited and joined the Barbershop Society and the Plainview Chapter's Chorus (now defunct, then under Ed Waesche).

It wasn't long before Dick was off and running in a barbershop quartet too. In 1971 he entered and won his first quartet contest "The First Annual Islip Invitational Barbershop Quartet Contest" Dick sang baritone, in the "Chanteymen" Gabe Lanzano (lead), Dick Freeth (bass) and Paul Mc Caulif (Tenor, who was eventually replaced by John Jacobs- pictured). He admits that it's not that they sang so well but they stayed within the time limit, then a part of the contest rules.

Dick was a baritone section leader in the Plainview chorus and remained an active member of the chapter for 10 years, through its merger with the Huntington Chapter (under Dave Johnson and then Dan Rolland, now defunct) and up to another merger with the Central Islip Chapter (before becoming the Twin Shores Chapter of today). But "I grew tired of always following Westchester in competitions". More importantly his wife's failing health required that he curtail his time away from home. In 1981 he reluctantly began a 10-year hiatus from barbershopping.

Dick's musical tastes and interests are substantial and varied. He has a collection of nearly 2000 recordings of every sort of music (and in every sort of format from shellac 78s to MP3s) He's a classic '50s audiophile, drawing on his substantial knowledge of electrical engineering, to build his own state of the art musical systems when HI-Fi was the Wi-fi of its day. He's contributes financially towards the maintenance of the Cathedral organ at St. John the Divine in Manhattan.

It is his collection of jazz recordings and jazz memorabilia, however, that belies his true musical love. "I'm not one to feel low too often but when I'm down, and I put on a jazz recording and [snap!] it picks me right up!". He has avidly attended jazz clubs, festivals and concerts enough to have a formidable collection of programs and autographs from five decades of concert going that include an astonishing list of jazz and pop luminaries: Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson, Les Brown, Benny Goodman, Gene Kruper, Billy Holiday, Stan Kenton, Bob Hope, Kay Star, The Hi-Lo's, The Four Freshmen and the list goes on.

After his 10 year hiatus, when Dick eventually considered returning to Barbershop singing in 1991 he visited a number of local chapters. Each had its own appeal and each had a truly fraternal quality but on his second visit to the Big Apple, "they sang Over the Rainbow and it just wiped me out….I felt competitive too and I wanted to make it to the international level. There was no question where I wanted to be."

Without pause when asked what's been drawing him to the BAC regularly now for over 15 years, he adds "I live for Roger's [Payne] arrangements. It's the New York thing too; I'd be unhappy as hell singing Dixie stuff. You have to include something that's 'today'. I didn't care for the Elvis [songs we did] but the audience loved it and there's nothing like seeing an audience jump to their feet!" Peak experiences, he'll concede, like performing at Carnegie Hall or his first International contest in 1993 in Calgary Canada, and the countless accolades of fans, also have kept him engaged in the Manhattan Chapter.

In return for the joy the BAC has brought him, Dick has served the Manhattan Chapter diligently not just as its ever attentive pitch blower and keeper of the keys, but also as the chapter's librarian, making sure the most current versions of our music comply with copyright law and are available to our members. He has served for several years on the Board of Directors and he's done some competitive quarteting in New York too. In his home he proudly displays the winning plaque for the 1991 Westfield Novice Contest in which he was a member of " Saviore Four" with Roger Payne, Randy Jones and Andrew Borts.

Today, as a retiree at 80, when he's not traveling around the world studying architectural antiquities or attending foreign barbershop conventions (like the first Russian Barbershop festival held in 1991) and when he's not assembling the newest computer components to keep up with today's technology…. when he's not out ballroom dancing at the Polish Hall in Port Washington with his gracious sweetheart, Pearl, you might find Dick, on the back of our risers keeping a vigilant eye on our director, ready to keep everyone in tune and on their toes with nothing more than a toot on that funny little pitch pipe.

Return to Homepage

Steve Adams	Dan George	Gabe Butler	Glynn Fluitt	Jim and Michael Steiner

Scott Brannon	Gary Ford	Brad Verebay	Vinny Haynes	Frank Hendricks	The Patricias

Bob Kovach	Joe Husstege	Gordon Harrison	Roger Payne	Dick White

John Gouveia	Pat Kelly