Masters of Harmony

Good morning, my name is Kirt Thiesmeyer. I am a member of the Masters of Harmony, a men’s championship chorus -- and I am here at the invitation of his family to talk about Gale Sherrodd, our brother, my mentor and friend.

This year, we lost five of our beloved members to the Chapter Eternal, as if to remind us of our mortality while the Masters that brought us together lives on.

I looked up the word “eulogy”; it means praise, that’s all. It’s not necessarily for the end of life; it’s for any time. We could be eulogizing each other every day. I am honored and humbled to speak for Gale – but also concerned that none of you is getting the experience necessary to do this when it is my turn.

Gale Manning Sherrodd was born in Billings, Montana, in 1947, and was raised on a cattle farm with three older brothers near Pompey’s Pillar, Montana – population: too small for Wikipedia to be bothered with. It’s named after a sandstone outcropping in the ground and is now a national monument.

Tall and gentle, his chores left Gale no time for sports. But he loved to draw, wrote articles for the Billings Gazette, and cracked up his friends singing “Happy Birthday” at parties in a Donald Duck voice. It wasn’t that he never got physical. His wife, Joan, told me that he once called out a bully on the school bus and broke the bully’s nose – got a proud three-day suspension for it, too.

Gale graduated from Rocky Mountain College in Billings and earned his Master’s degree at the University of Montana. He spent most of the past 40 years teaching the physical sciences, most recently teaching chemistry at the Los Angeles High School of the Arts on the Cal State LA campus. His students included singer and songwriter Josh Groban and multi-talented actor and musician Corbin Bleu, who is with us today. Because of Gale Sherrodd, Josh and Corbin not only passed chemistry but are fans of barbershop.

Gale met the former Joan Schrupp on a double date in college with somebody else. She describes herself then as a “naïve city girl” and I guess she was dazzled by this long, tall, sophisticated farmer from Pompey’s Pillar. They married when Gale was just 19; Joan was 20. She once told him, “We’ll be 70 when we have our 50th anniversary.” And he replied, “No, you’ll be 70; I will only be 69!” They made it to 45 years.

Gale’s childhood home was filled with music. He had an uncle who was a grand champion fiddler. His mother Ida wrote music and sang; so does his granddaughter Brianna. Elder son Sean sings barbershop with the Masters. Second son Shane is a high school band director. Gale played the alto sax; so did Sean; so does grandson Kyle – and it’s the same alto sax, passed down through three generations and still capable of wailing! Both Brianna and Shane also play the saxophone. The music gene pervades this family.

I asked Sean what was the Sherrodd family’s origin; he thought it might be Scotland somewhere. In fact, the Sherrods – with one “D” – seem to have sprung out of Cheshire, England – where the cat came from. Way up in the NW corner of England at the NE corner of Wales, not too far from Manchester. They came to America in the latter half of the 18th century, that is, the 1700s, if you’re paying attention. You could ask Doug Maddox to explain.

Sean told me that his great or great-great grandfather added the extra D on the end of their name; no one knows why. But it’s completely in line with other Masters of Harmony aristocrats who have multiple double letters in their names, like Glenn Hennessy, Lovell Stoddard and Brett Littlefield.

I discovered that the Sherrodd population density in Montana is 1 in 50,000; in California, they are 1 in 5 million. The most frequent misspelling and mispronunciation of the name seems to be calling them “Sherwood.”

A Barbershopper since 1982 – that’s 30 years – Gale took his minister’s suggestion and joined the Rocky Mountainaires chorus in Missoula. Of course, we all think barbershopping is very spiritual.

But Gale and Joan were beginning to realize that it was cold in Montana and, so a few months later, they had moved to La Mirada, and Gale and then Sean and even Shane became members of the nearby Whittier Choralaires. Gale eventually served as VP Music, VP Membership and President of the chapter, and had the thrill of singing with Sean in the quartet, Code 4. His barbershop achievements with Whittier include attending Harmony College seven times and receiving significant awards as bulletin editor, as well as drawing numerous cartoons. One summer, Gale managed to coax the entire 55-member chorus to Harmony College with their legendary director, Earl Moon.

In the spring of 1999, Gale (then a baritone) joined tenor Sean at the Masters of Harmony, forming the seventh father-son pair on our risers, just in time for them to win their first gold medals together at International. Gale continued his wonderful writing for The Masters Voice, and was one of the dependable Masters photographers for many years, even memorializing me.

As you all know, Gale had a lot of humor about him; it was easy to make him laugh. He had a smile that would start on one side and then gradually take over his whole face. It was fun to provoke that. I told him once that chemistry was not my strong subject in high school, but I still remember Avogadro’s Hypothesis. Just the words – I don’t know what they mean. He thought that was rather droll.

Joan, too, must have added a bit of whimsy. Her maiden name was Schrupp. Wouldn’t you know that Sherrodd and Schrupp would combine and call their sons Sean Sherrodd and Shane Sherrodd. They might have had a trio of daughters named Charlotte, Charlene and Shirley Sherrodd; another son could have been called Shadrak. That double SH would have fixed any lisps right away.

I guess you could say that the grandchildren, Brianna, Kyle and Sadie, sure are lucky that Joan and Gale didn’t name them!

While I was singing lead, I knew Gale from a distance, as one of the now big, easy-going basses on the other half of the room; there were so many of them.

Later, I joined the bass section and got to stand next to Gale on stage left – over where Brett Littlefield couldn’t see me.

Then I tore a quadriceps tendon and had my own long rehab on the risers with my cane matching Gale’s. We used to greet each other with “Hi, Gimpy,” a sign of high respect and empathy.

Gale was first diagnosed with cancer in 2005 about the same time as his childhood playmate and cousin, Bill Sherrodd. Together, they suffered its onslaughts for seven years. Each assured the other that whoever “got there first” would hold the door open for the other one. They lost cousin Bill one month ago.

Sean said the oncologist told him Gale was the strongest patient he had ever had. And that’s what we saw on the risers – the strength and resolve. He had just gotten out of a hospital bed when he came to our retreat before contest in 2011. Words like “indomitable” and “tenacious” are not exaggerations. He loved the Masters of Harmony perhaps second only to his family in this life, and he was determined to share in the triumphs, no matter the costs.

After we won the championship in Kansas City a year ago, standing next to each other, I walked the 10 blocks back to the hotel with him – no cane, no walker – through the brutal July heat, and I asked him, “Gale, how do you manage?” He said, 24-hour, time-release morphine pills. I was astonished at his courage. Most of us were unaware.

Now Gale has passed beyond pain into peace, into the love and memories of his family and all who knew him – an immortality on earth that we can always count on.

I looked up the teacher ratings at Gale’s Los Angeles High School of the Arts, and found a posting from an anonymous young man who said he had had Mr. Sherrodd for chemistry in the 10th grade and that [quote] “He is one of the greatest teachers in the world.” That’s pretty special, an encomium like that as part of your legacy, the “greatest in the world.”

I was never the best at anything until I joined the Masters of Harmony and won a gold medal for singing. Gale Sherrodd did it five times; the last time, in Kansas City, he was in great pain. The first time, in Anaheim, he did it as a baritone – which I guess is saying pretty much the same thing.

I don’t do this for a living and sometimes words fail even a wordsmith. So I would like to quote another Masters brother whose eloquence fits this occasion. I apologize for stealing his material, but it’s too good not to repeat.

This is what Skip Farrar wrote to us all:

“At a deeply personal level I know and understand how courageous [Gale] was as he faced his own mortality and still expressed his deep and unselfish love for his family and friends. His strength to fight through adversity and sing with his brothers and his son on yet one more international stage was nothing short of remarkable. * * * You didn’t have to know Gale for long before you realized just what a wonderful husband, father, teacher and friend he was. My life is richer for having known Gale and I will be pleased and proud to put on my Class Bs and sing for my friend one last time.”

Let that be my last word as well.

Farewell, my brother; may you walk with God.