We had some fun at Marquette University tonight. We’ve actually made the drive down to Milwaukee a number of times to sing the national anthem for the Bucks, Brewers, Admirals and Marquette basketball. But this was the first time we sang for the Marquette women’s basketball game at the Al McGuire Center. The game was great, with Marquette beating Cincinnati 66-48.
Since we were right there on campus, Chris showed us around his old stomping grounds after the game. The coolest building we encountered was the Gesu Church. Unfortunately, it was locked; we had hoped that maybe we could go inside to ring a chord or two. But we settled for the steps out front. This church is a beautiful building that’s been around for 112 years!

Marquette is a 125-year-old school supported by the Jesuit order of Catholic priests. The Gesu Church was named in 1893 for the church in Rome where St. Ignatius (founder of the Jesuit order) is buried. All four of us were in awe of the steeples, the stone walls and the overall beauty of the building. Singing The Lord’s Prayer right there at this house of God was very moving. I hope we get back there sometime soon, at at time when we can see what it looks like inside.

Holy cow! What a blast! We’ve been delivering Singing Valentines for years, and this year was no exception. We all burned a vacation day at work on Tuesday, and met at Chris’ house at 7:15am to get the day going.

We met with the other quartets at a restaurant to pick up our cards and roses and balloons, and off we went. First Appleton, then Neenah, over to Menasha, north to De Pere, back down to Appleton, and back north to Lambeau Field for our final Valentine of the day at 7:30pm. All told, we delivered 17 Singing Valentines.

The most fun visit had to be at Howe Elementary school, in downtown Green Bay. We sang for one of the teachers in front of a combined class with about 80 kids. Strange thing was that they were about to watch the movie, “March of the Penguins”, then four guys in tuxedos walked in. As we sang, the teacher had tears in her eyes. And when we were done, we took a photo of us with the teacher and all 80 kids. They were pretty excited, what a blast!

Can’t wait to do it again next year.