Last night I gave our choir librarian, Jerome Vasconcellos, a much-belated birthday card (his birthday is in September!) and I finally am getting around to writing about another of our Valuable Volunteers (see my earlier post about Vreni Griffith). (What is this anyway, about all our volunteers having names which start with “V”?)

In talking with Jerome in preparation for this post, I learned that Jerome is the youngest of seven children and has a twin brother. A graduate of McKinley High School, he is a home health aide for St. Francis which means that he goes into people’s homes and does things like take blood pressure readings, etc.

Jerome came to the LCH Choir in 1991 and took on the constant but necessary task of putting all the choral music away every week. He has to deal with people like me who don’t turn in their music right after it’s performed. I must confess that sometimes I don’t turn in my psalms for a year or more but leave them in the accompaniment book. (Yikes! I’m SOOO bad!)

When I asked him if he could name one of his hobbies, Jerome said that he likes to bake — all kinds of desserts — but one of his favorite is a pumpkin pie. He says he uses the recipe on the back of the can but eliminates all the spices except for cinnamon. Mmmm . . . sounds interesting!

Anyway, we owe a boatload of thanks to Jerome for taking on the choir librarian task. On regular Sundays, the choir sings at least four pieces of music (psalm, Gospel acclamation, offertory anthem, communion motet) and on festival Sundays, it’s that plus the propers (introit, offertory and communion verses) and hymn descants. But it’s after Advent/Christmas and Holy Week/Easter that Jerome is worth his weight in gold, when he will probably have to collect and file 40-50 pieces of music from every chorister. That’s a lot of paper!