Richard Wayne LaJoie

1933 - 2005

Richard (Dick) LaJoie, a bass singer and soloist, was a singing evangelist who worked closely with the Voice of Prophecy in evangelism throughout the U.S., Canada, and Hawaii in the 1970s. He also worked as a salesman for over forty years.

Dick was born and raised in Superior, Wisconsin. After serving in the U.S. Marine Corp, he attended Emmanuel Missionary College, now Andrews University, where he majored in music. While there, he renewed a childhood friendship with Connie Lou Sayen, and they married in 1956.

They would eventually settle in Southern California, where she was working as director of Transada, Adventist Media Center's in-house advertising agency, in Thousand Oaks when she died in December 1998, at age 60.

Dick had continued singing through the years in many settings and was a participant in the ongoing Voice of Prophecy Reunion Concert series, being featured on the DVDs of three of them: Del and Friends, Down Home in Texas, and Through it All. Well-known Seventh-day Adventist artists including Del Delker, Bob and Jim Edwards, Jerry Patton, Joey and Phil Draper, Joe Melashenko, and others joined with him in his singing on those occasions.

Following the death of Connie, Dick married Beth Lorraine Lyberg and was living in Ventura, California, when he died at age 72.

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Sources: Obituary, The Ventura County Star, 17 April 2005; Voice of Prophecy website, David B. Smith, "Connie's Unfinished Symphony," 1 February 1999; familyreunionmusic.com; Lake Union Herald, September 1990, 22; Social Security Death Index; 2003 Andrews University Alumni Directory, 254.