By Gunnar Olson, Newberg Graphic

Newberg resident Dick Cadd, who made music an integral part of his life, forming an award-winning quartet in Newberg in the late 1940s, singing over ABC radio airwaves and before presidents, and spending 32 of his adult years singing and leading choirs as a missionary in the Philippines, died on Oct. 3. He was 81.

His family said he died of natural causes, surrounded by his wife and children at his home in Newberg. Born Feb. 15, 1924, in Redondo Beach, Calif., he was remembered at a ceremony on Oct. 9 at Newberg Friends Church.

Like much of his life, he made sure his final farewell was filled with music. His daughter, Yvonne Everly of Newberg, said the family found a note from him placed prominently on his desk. In it he asks that his memorial service be a happy one and lists some of his favorite “joyful worship choruses and hymns.”

“I would like it to be a joyful occasion, knowing that I will be with the Lord Jesus; no pain and no sorrow,” he wrote. “This is a promotion day for me, so there should be joyful singing and rejoicing.”

As involved in music as he was, Cadd’s family described him as a loving and caring husband, father and friend; and as an eternal optimist who believed great things could be done with God’s help. In interviews, family members remembered what made Cadd remarkable.

Helen (Antrim) Cadd, Cadd’s wife of 58 years, said Cadd was not one to get upset easily. She recalled getting a flat tire while driving with Cadd, and how his reaction compared to the reaction of a previous boyfriend whom she had been riding with one or two years earlier when he got a flat tire.

The first time, it was a sunny day and they had nowhere they needed to be. The man got “irritable” and was “very unhappy” about having to change the tire.

With her husband-to-be, it was dark and raining and they were late, she recalled. “He got out in the pouring rain, changed the tire ... and he got back in and he was laughing about it,” she said. “He probably apologized to me for having to wait, but he wasn’t grouchy, wasn’t miserable. It was a part of life.”

She said he was fun for the kids, devoting all of the time he wasn’t traveling with his singing group, the Four Flats, to his children.

Everly said Cadd accepted people for who they were and that “everybody knew he loved them.” She recalled the choir he formed while he and his family were in the Philippines as missionaries. The choir was called the Madrigals-and-Guys (a play on words — a “madrigal” is a song for two or three unaccompanied voices), and he would invite “difficult” children to join the choir. “He would just encourage them musically, and that would give them direction,” Everly said.