George William Casebeer

1909 - 1993

George Casebeer sang first tenor in the Voice of Prophecy King's Heralds quartet from 1941 to 1944. He was born in Chile, where his father, George William, was serving as principal of the Adventist school. He spent most of his childhood and adolescence in Argentina. During those years in South America, he developed ongoing health problems which eventually led to his leaving the quartet.

He was in the quartet when the VOP did its first coast-to-coast broadcast on Sunday evening, January 4, 1942, four weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the entry of the United States into World War II. Bob Edwards, himself a tenor and later a member of the quartet, later wrote about being particularly fascinated by Casebeer's "beautiful lyric voice" when he heard the quartet sing over the radio in their first national broadcast while he was a freshman at Union College.

Casebeer shared in the excitement of those associated with the broadcast when it grew from the original 88 stations to 225 nationwide in its first year. By the time he left, to be replaced by Ben Glanzer, the radio program was being broadcast in both North and South America and in South Africa.

He subsequently taught at the elementary and secondary level and in special education. Although he retired in Corona, California, in 1981, he moved to Cave Junction, Oregon, where he had worked for the U. S. Forest Service in the Grayback area in previous summers. He worked a total of nineteen summers for the U.S.F.S. and was living in Cave Junction, when he died at age 83.

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Source: Obituary, Grants Pass, Oregon, Courier, 12 January 1993.