It started — as so many good things do — with a conversation between two businessmen. Harry Barnes, a bass singer from one of the first barbershop chapters in Wichita, Kansas, made periodic trips to Lane County for his wholesale lumber trade. One of his regular stops was Bob Bronson's Trio Lumber Company. Between talk of timber prices, the two men talked music.

Harry kept nudging Bob: Eugene needed a local barbershop chapter. Bob eventually brought the idea to Frank Graham of the Hills Creek Four, a local quartet who sang for the sheer joy of it. Graham talked to Ernest Murphy, and together they persuaded a couple dozen men to attend an organizing meeting at the studios of KUGN radio.

The idea caught fire immediately. On October 19, 1946, the Society issued a charter to Eugene Chapter No. 292 — only the fourth chapter to be chartered in the Pacific Northwest, after Port Angeles, Tacoma, and Portland. The first officers were President Ernest Cullen Murphy, Vice President Frank Graham, Secretary Ralph Hanson, Treasurer Fred Brenne, and District Representative Harold Plumb.

That spirit said everything about the group's priorities. They were there to sing.

The new chapter met weekly, and their early focus was almost entirely on singing. Written arrangements weren't yet in vogue — barbershop in those days meant "woodshedding," improvising harmonies by ear. Their first director, Charles Sargent, was a gifted harmony instructor who also sang baritone in the chapter's first quartet, the Pioneer Four. He stayed 18 months before moving to Tucson, where he went on to found many chapters throughout the Southwest.

From the very beginning, Cascade was outward-looking. Frank Graham personally contacted Chambers of Commerce across the Northwest about forming local barbershop chapters. Within the chapter's first year, groups had formed in Roseburg and Klamath Falls. Over the next five years, the Cascade Chorus would sponsor five new chapters and assist with eight more.

That growth prompted a regional reorganization. A delegation of Cascade members — Bud Leabo, Bob Adair, Frank Graham, and E.C. Murphy — traveled to a barbershop show in Santa Monica and secured approval to form a new district for the Pacific Northwest. The first president of what became the Evergreen District was E.C. Murphy — the same man who had been Cascade's first chapter president just one year earlier. Over the decades, five Evergreen District presidents would come from the Cascade Chorus — more than from any other chapter.

The chapter's first big public event came on October 8, 1949: the First Annual Parade of Quartets, featuring eleven quartets from San Francisco to Port Angeles. The only chorus on the program was Cascade's own, then 46 singers strong under director Bud Leabo. The show eventually grew into a beloved tradition, renamed the Singin'est Nights of the Year in 1966.

At a time when the Society's focus was almost entirely on quartets, the Cascade Chorus was already performing as a chorus — as early as 1948, at a Christmas party in the Eugene Hotel. That early start proved prescient. When the Society held its very first chorus competition in Detroit in 1953, Cascade was the Evergreen District's representative. They placed fourth in the nation under director Bud Leabo.

Three years later, in 1956, they returned to the International stage and placed second. To this day, no Evergreen District chorus has ever ranked higher.

The 1950s also brought some unforgettable characters. The Octogenarians quartet — John Starr (84), George McLean (85), Frank Terpin (86), and Francis Cook (89) — performed full half-hour sacred and secular concerts from memory, aided by hearing devices courtesy of the Zenith Radio Corporation and music supplied gratis by a publisher in Indiana.

At the opposite end of the age spectrum, the Sharp Four were four 18-year-old seniors at Eugene High School who had started singing together as sophomores. They represented the District at the International contest in Miami in 1955 and were still performing together as University of Oregon students in 1957.

In 1956 alone, the chorus logged 22 public appearances while its quartets performed over 200 times. And in August 1958, the Register-Guard reported that Cascade had just initiated 18 new members in a single drive — a remarkable feat by any measure.

The 1960s saw Cascade competing internationally for the fifth time — this time in Philadelphia in 1961, where Bud Leabo's chorus placed eighth. (Lodging at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel was quoted at five dollars per person for a four-man dormitory room — already a stretch for the chapter treasury.)

But the decade was as much about community as competition. The chorus became a fixture in Eugene's entertainment scene, co-sponsoring annual shows with local service clubs to raise money for charity. Recipients over the years included the Eugene Hearing and Speech Center, the Pearl Buck School for children with disabilities, McKenzie-Willamette Hospital, Boy and Girl Scouts, the March of Dimes, and a benefit to help send a Drain boy named Gary Winslow to the Mayo Clinic for heart surgery.

Meanwhile, the Sandblast tradition — born from those coastal dune buggy trips — continued to grow. By the end of the Coos Bay Sandblast in 1965, the weekend gathering was drawing hundreds of people from as far as California and Tacoma.

Not all adventures were planned. In October 1950, four Cascade quartets drove to Brookings for a show with other chapters — only to find severe coastal flooding had blocked the roads home. They improvised nightly performances for locals in Gold Beach and Bandon, finally making it back to Eugene on Tuesday: "broke and tired — both from the unexpected duration of the trip and from what they saw as their duty to party every night they were on the road."

1964 brought another memorable quartet: the Melo-D's, consisting of Dave, Dan, and Dean Roberts — and their father, Wayne. A true family affair.

Through much of the chapter's life, rehearsal space had been borrowed from the Celeste Campbell Senior Center. When the center began charging rent and restricting Tuesday nights, ten chorus members — led by Ken Schneider — formed a small corporation and purchased a former Free Methodist Church building on Fourth Street in Springfield in March 1976.

For two and a half years, the chorus finally had its own Harmony Hall. The investors charged only enough rent to cover their costs and gave the chapter an option to buy at their purchase price. But challenges with finances and maintenance ultimately led them to sell the property to the City of Springfield. The dream of a permanent home would have to wait.

In the meantime, the chorus found other ways to build income and joy. Singouts were turned into mini-adventures: one memorable evening took about thirty singers — and 23 wives and girlfriends — to Seaside to perform for a convention of a thousand insurance agents. Unable to find an afterglow spot in Seaside, they called the Elks Club in Astoria, who welcomed them with a steak dinner, a great forties band, and a receptive audience for an impromptu Cascade Chorus concert.

In 1981, Mel Knight took over as director with Jim DeBusman as his assistant, and the results were swift. In the fall of 1982, Cascade won their first District championship in 22 years, earning a berth at the 1983 International contest in Seattle — where they placed eighth. No Evergreen chorus had ranked that high since Cascade's own eighth-place finish in 1961.

Also in 1982, the chapter produced its first phonograph record, Cascade of Roses, featuring the chorus and four quartets: McKenzie Touring Company, The 4 of Us, Cascade Connection, and Best Intentions. A second record, As Time Goes By, followed in 1983.

1982 also marked the first class of the Evergreen Hall of Fame — and Bud Leabo, who had died the year before, was one of the inaugural inductees. He would be the first of five Hall of Fame honorees from the Cascade Chorus. No other Evergreen chapter has had so many individuals so recognized.

In 1983 the chorus hosted the Evergreen District contest at the Hult Center for the Performing Arts — and won it, earning a return trip to the International stage in St. Louis in 1984. Less than two weeks after that contest, Cascade was back on stage in Eugene for the 16th World Conference of the International Society for Music Education, presenting an 1,300-person audience with two International champion quartets, one District champion quartet, and the full Cascade Chorus.

When the Society called both director Mel Knight and assistant Jim DeBusman to serve on the International staff, new director Denny Stiers stepped in and promptly guided the chorus to three more International appearances in 1986, 1988, and 1990.

The 1988 International in San Antonio had a memorable bonus: in full clown costumes, the chorus performed a special set at the Hertzberg Circus Collection museum. ("It sure does get hot in a non-air-conditioned museum building in Texas in early July wearing costumes and full facial makeup.") That same year, the McKenzie Touring Company quartet joined the Hult Center's production of The Music Man.

After Denny Stiers departed for a career move, the chapter promoted from within — selecting a 21-year-old University of Oregon graduate student named Gabe Caretto as director. He put the chorus in "Forties"-era costumes and worked them hard before completing his degree and moving on. Jim McKee followed.

One of the decade's most enduring contributions began in 1991: Singing Valentines. On the days around February 14th, Cascade quartets fan out across the area to deliver personalized barbershop serenades — along with small gifts and a card — to the spouses and sweethearts of customers. Even quartets from the Greater Eugene Sweet Adelines chorus join in. The smiles and tears that greet these visits, year after year, leave no doubt that the recipients get their money's worth.

1992 brought a remarkable "first." Though Cascade didn't attend the International Convention in New Orleans, they were represented by Secret 4-Mula — a quartet with only one member who belonged to the Society. Competing in the inaugural College Quartet Harmony Sweepstakes, they placed third. They were, as the historian noted, "only three Ducks and a Miller" — three UO students and one from Springfield High School.

In 1995, the McKenzie Touring Company quartet — led by bass Tim Knight — traveled to the Buckeye Invitational in Ohio and won first place in the Comedy Quartet category with a three-legged-man set that, by most accounts, may be "the funniest any audience has ever seen."