On Wednesday night, I and a few other folks from LCH attended the Spring Concert of St. Andrew’s Priory choirs conducted by our own Naomi Castro, with Carl Crosier, accompanist. Randy Castello (one of the LCH tenors) turned to me and said, “Did you see the obituary for Pat Chamberlain this week?” In the picture above, taken at the American Choral Directors Association’ convention in 1992, Pat is in the second row, fifth from the left.
Here’s the obituary as found in the Star-Advertiser:
Patricia ChamberlainApril 28, 2012
Patricia “Pat” Chamberlain, 86, of Honolulu, a homemaker, died in Honolulu. She was born in Wisconsin. She is survived by sons Robert and William, daughter Susan J., a grandchild and four great-grandchildren. Private services.
Both Pat and her husband, Charles “Chuck,” were extremely active members of the Lutheran Church of Honolulu choir for years and years. (Chuck died on May 27, 2010; also at age 86) Pat had a beautiful soprano voice that just soared. She started out in the first soprano section, then as she aged, moved to second soprano, then first alto, and finally ended up in the second alto section. Pat was for a time the church secretary, but was also very willing to volunteer for any kind of clerical task at the church — for years and years she was on the “Heart Beat” (at the time, a weekly newsletter) folding team.
Chuck sang in the tenor section and was very interested in recording and sound production. It was because of Chuck that we have a number of historical recordings of the choir and the organ at LCH.
Both Chuck and Pat were also organ aficionados and were members of the local chapter of the American Guild of Organists, although to my knowledge, neither of them played the organ. I remember them always coming out for church work days — they could always be counted on to help. They were also avid barbershoppers — Pat was for years a member of Sweet Adelines, and Chuck sang with the local chapter of the Society for the Preservation of Barbershop Quartet Singing in the America (SPBQSA).
In a previous post, I identified all the people in the ACDA photo above, and it’s a little sad to think that only eight people are still with the choir today, twenty years later. Not counting myself, the list includes Carol Langner, Randy Castello, Allen Bauchle, Olivia Castro, Jerome Vasconcellos, Roy Helms and David Del Rocco.