Ed Terui can’t help but grin when he chats about his upcoming performance with the Crusaders Quartet. These are the same guys, after all, who began singing together in 1956. “We started 57 years ago and we’re all alive,” he
Ed Terui can’t help but grin when he chats about his upcoming performance with the Crusaders Quartet.
These are the same guys, after all, who began singing together in 1956.
“We started 57 years ago and we’re all alive,” he said, laughing.
Terui, along with Paul Robbins, T.A. Strader, Paul Brennan and Ken Mays, is performing two concerts today on Oahu. Then, they’re scheduled for five performances on Kauai.
Terui, a Kauai pastor, said the men have kept in touch over the years and last sang together at a 50th class reunion in 2010. They last performed on Kauai in 1992.
Terui is looking forward to reuniting with his old pals.
“We’re like brothers,” he said.
It was in the fall of 1956 when the Rev. Don Rohrs, Missionary Youth Fellowship director of the Missionary Church Association, called five students at Fort Wayne Bible College in Fort Wayne, Ind., into his office.
Those five were Robbins, Strader, Terui, Brennan and Mays, and they didn’t know each other.
Rohrs explained he wanted a quartet to travel with him when he went out to speak at churches, camps and conventions.
“He said, ‘We want to have this quartet. Would you guys work together and come up with something?’”
“So we started practicing,” Terui said.
They became the National MYF Gospel team representing the youth department of the MCA that first year.
The following school year, the quartet was asked to represent the college during the school year and throughout the summer.
Selecting the name Crusaders Quartet, the group ministered from Maryland to Hawaii in the summer of 1958 and continued up to their graduation in June 1960.
“It was rewarding to have incoming students approach us and say that it was the influence of the quartet that caused them to attend FWBC,” Terui said.
Quartet members have kept in touch through the years and in the summer of 1992, they enjoyed a reunion in Hawaii with concerts on Oahu and Kauai.
Time for an encore.
“We are so excited and thrilled that we’ll be coming together for one more reunion with concerts on Oahu and Kauai once again,” Terui said.
He credits Rohrs for the quartet’s staying power.
“This was his vision 57 years ago and it’s still going,” Terui said.
Their scheduled performances on Kauai:
• Sunday, Oct. 6, 7:30 p.m., Kalaheo Missionary Church.
• Wednesday, Oct. 9, 7 p.m., Ohana Christian Fellowship (meeting at Kapaa Middle School).
• Thursday, Oct. 10, 10 a.m., Regency at Puakea.
• Friday, Oct. 11, 9:45 a.m., Mahelona long term care.
• Sunday, Oct. 13, 9 a.m., Kapaa Missionary Church.
