 Frank Morse
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By the time of the annual meeting at Kalamazoo, May 8, 1943, Michigan boasted 19 chapters. Frank Morse of Muskegon was elected president for the following year with Gordon Grant, Saginaw, as secretary. It was at this time when the Oakland County Chapter grew to 306 members, the first chapter in the Society to do so. There was a reason for this. It seems that during wartime beer was hard to get, as most of it was going overseas; but the Oakland County Chapter had three beer distributors listed among its membership, so it followed that everyone wanted to join Oakland County where there was no shortage. Muskegon also jumped to over 300 members later in the year; not for the same reason, however. They had been meeting at a local Elks Club, and they inducted the entire membership of the club into the Society. It was on November 6, 1943, that the Oakland County Chapter staged a Parade of Quartets in Detroit's Masonic Temple. This event was well patronized and laid the foundation for future events in this mammoth auditorium. Surprisingly, today this auditorium is rarely or seldom used by barbershoppers.
During the early years, the district contests and district conventions and meetings were held separately, the contests in midwinter and the meetings in the summer. There were no international preliminaries until 1945 when sectional preliminaries were held and these were repeated in 1946 and 1947. The first district preliminaries were held in 1948, following which the district's two business meetings were held in conjunction with the spring (international preliminaries) and the fall (district quartet contest).
SAGINAW HOSTED DISTRICT CONTEST IN FEBRUARY, 1943:The 1943 district contest was held in Saginaw on February 23. Twenty-three quartets responded to the call despite a blizzard and sub-zero temperature and the added impediment of wartime travel restrictions. The UNHEARD OF FOUR, with Len Horton and Bill Griffith of the old champion SAWDUST FOUR plus Henry Klooster and John Buitendorp, took top honors. Thus Horton and Griffith were on the championship team three years running which is "unheard" of even if the quartet wasn't. Second, third, fourth and fifth place winners respectively were the ACOUSTICAL PRESECUTIN' FOUR of Jackson (Hodgeboom, Breitmeyer, Farrand and Colestock), the VARIETY FOUR of Birmingham (Stiers, Carruthers, Livingston and Langlois), the DETROIT TURNERS (Creed, Pazik, Roberts and Joure), the HARMONY HOUNDS of Detroit (Creed, DeWolfe, Roberts and Wolff). Again rule changes were necessary because Mark Roberts, along with Jim Creed, sang with the last two named quartets, and the district contest rules were made to conform to the national rules prohibiting a contestant from singing in more than one competing quartet. A couple of days after this contest it was discovered that a miscalculation had been made in the scoring and that the LEGION FOUR of Detroit (Wrobbel, Marsden, Shields and Tubbs) should have been placed in the first five, but by then everyone had sobered up and had lost interest. The Saginaw Chapter and the Bancroft Hotel teamed up to make this a memorable affair.
FOUR MICHIGAN QUARTETS MAKE FINALS AT CHICAGO:Michigan could be justly proud of their accomplishments at the national convention held in Chicago June 17-19, 1943. Four quartets made the finals, with the HARMONY HALLS from Grand Rapids taking the fifth place medal (Bob Hazenberg, lead; Ed Gaikema, tenor; Ray Hall, baritone; Gordon Hall, bass), and the other finalists, the ACOUSTICAL PERSECUTIN' FOUR from Jackson, the UNHEARD OF FOUR and HARMONY WEAVERS from Muskegon. In addition to some fine quartet finishes, the Muskegon Chapter won first place in the Achievement Awards for cities in the Population Group Two followed closely by Saginaw. Frank Morse of the Muskegon Chapter was elected a national vice president, Carroll Adams executive secretary, and John Buitendorp of Muskegon, Ray Campau of Saginaw, J. Abbott of Albion, W. Carleton Scott of Oakland County and Joseph Wolff from Detroit were elected to the National Board of Directors.
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