Oct. 18, 1975: The Lord's Marionettes

 


Say Hallelujah!

Oct. 18, 1975

Lord’s Marionettes Give Testament in Song 

FOR EACH CAR OUTSIDE Gary and Barbara Becker’s West Seneca home, at least half a dozen bumper stickers rejoice in The Word. Faith Is The Victory. Praise The Lord. What The World Needs Now Is Jesus.  

          This is the rallying point for The Lord’s Marionettes, whose 13 members are a Gospel singing group and a spiritual community as well.

          “Whatever is standing as an obstacle, Lord, please wash it away,” Gary prays to start the Wednesday evening practice. Gary, the oldest of the group, is its spiritual adviser.

          His words strike great excitement in the singers circled around several microphones in the middle of the living room, holding hands.

          They respond with a chorus of Praise The Lord and Thank You Jesus.

          “We used to be a folk group that did Saturday Masses at St. Catherine of Siena Church here in West Seneca,” explains Gary, who works days for an appliance store branch in Amherst.

* * *

“THERE WAS Pat and I and our wives and Tommy and Mark,” he says. “Then the Lord told us we were going to have a new group. People just kept coming to us until we got to where we are now.”

          The guitars – Renee Jaworski’s 12-string, Pat Connelly’s six-string and Gary’s four-string – strike up a strum, someone beats a tambourine and the singers hit an exceptionally creamy harmony, full of tenors and sopranos:

          “I’ve got peace by the river in my soul …”

          The shared faith of the Lord’s Marionettes is that of the Charismatic movement of the Roman Catholic Church and it goes deeper than the slogans on the cars outside.

          It’s personal and fundamental, ecstatic and all-pervading.

          Each has a story of how belief developed. For Barbara Becker, it provided assurance after doctors couldn’t tell her why her otherwise normal younger son hadn’t learned to talk.

          For muscular Danny Carr, it grew from frustration with a well-paying job in New Jersey.

          “You hear so much about Jesus people and the Jesus movement and how they change the lives of drug addicts and derelicts,” Gary says.

          “Well, there are also people who come to this who are everyday people, people who think they have it all and find they don’t.”

          “My wife was into it for years,” grins Pat, who’s musical director, a designer for Linde Division and still a bit of the class clown he was in school, “and I thought she was a crackpot.

* * *

“AT THAT TIME, Gary and I used to get together with a keg of beer Wednesday nights and sing Kingston Trio songs. Then he met this Charismatic minister and he and Barb came to know the Lord.

          “One night he was here and went through these motions and I really did feel something. Not just that feeling you get with a last-second score at a football game, but something more.

          “And bit by bit, Christ became a person in my life. It changed my outlook on everything.”

          Barbara Becker, skeptical from college philosophy courses, changed too.

          “You know that song, ‘I Believe,’” she says. “I always associated it with Billy Graham and I thought it was so tacky. After I came to know the Lord, I thought, wow, this is really real.”

          Pat writes songs. Verses from Revelations and Thessalonians set to music. The group hopes to record some of them next year.

          Another member, Tom Shriver, operates a Christian supply store, the Lord’s Handiwork, on Union Road.

          The group quotes extensively from the Old and New Testaments, a talent reinforced by weekly Bible study sessions.

          They wear faith boldly and allow no wayward soul to rest comfortably on unexercised beliefs.

* * *

“THE PROBLEMS in life aren’t just drugs and drunkenness,” Pat declares. “It’s whether you go to Heaven or Hell.

          “The Scriptures say life is like a vapor. It’s here today, gone tomorrow.”

          The group’s name, they say, was given in prophecy by the ministers who turned the beliefs of Pat and the Beckers. The Marinonettes are to open their voices. The Lord, they say, will open the doors.

          In the year they’ve been the Lord’s Marionettes, they’ve played prayer meetings, nursing homes, hospitals, the Salvation Army, local colleges and several weddings, for which they learned some John Denver songs. Saturdays find them at the Harvesters Coffeehouse, Transit near Seneca.

* * *

“HOW SUCCESSFUL has it been?” Gary ponders. “Well, one night a girl came up to us from back of the curtains and said: ‘I’ve been listening and I want to know Jesus like you do.’ Now that one soul made me feel we’ve been successful.”

          As for the future, Pat says he’s had a dream about it.

          “We were at a big healing service,” he recalls, “and we were singing and I remember looking into the face of this woman who’d been healed.

          “I know it’s going to go at least that far. How much farther, I suppose, is up to the Lord.”

* * * * *

IN THE PHOTO: The Lord’s Marionettes, from left, front, Theresa Keiffer, Greg and Peggy Carr, Peggy Connelly, Barbara Carr and Renee Jaworski. From left, rear, Barbara Becker, Tom Shriver, Mark Kowalewski, Ellen Neskel, Danny Carr, Gary Becker and Pat Connelly.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: The Beckers are no longer with us. Barbara Becker died in 2010 and Gary passed away 10 years later. The Lord’s Marionettes don’t show up in my Internet searches, but Tom Shriver and Greg Carr do.

Among the People of Praise Christian Community, Tom is considered a Walking Miracle. He’s come back from being paralyzed by cancer nearly 30 years ago and has walked the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route in Spain twice in recent years. He’s been principal Buffalo Branch coordinator for the People of Praise, leading prayer meetings in the Black Rock neighborhood, based in the Church of the Assumption, and with his wife Theresa is founder of the community’s Buffalo Camp, a summer camp for children.    

Greg also has continued on the evangelical path. Here’s what he says on his website from Anchor of Hope Ministries in Pasadena, Md.

          “In 1976, my lovely bride Peggy and I began a home Bible study in Buffalo with four people, which quickly grew to 14, then 20, and by that year’s end we had 50 'hungry for Jesus' people attending! We had to rent space to facilitate our growing group and on July 7, 1977, we opened a coffee house called the Bread of Life Center.

          “We then came under the ministry of Full Gospel Tabernacle pastored by Tommy Reid. In May of 1981, I received an invitation from Pastor Walter and Marilyn Hickey to join their pastoral staff in Denver to start Life for Today Bible School. After much prayer, Peggy and I packed up our four children and moved to Denver.

          “Five years later, I received a letter from Victory Bible Church in Pasadena, Md., to come and candidate for a pastor’s position and in June of 1986 we arrived in Maryland with our (now) five children to begin ministry to the folks of Anne Arundel County. I am grateful to God for 30 years of ministry here in Maryland and look forward to many more!”  

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