His father was a physician and a cellist and singer who loved classical music. Bob learned to play trumpet while young and made his initial foray into playing folk music with a banjo he purchased in a pawnshop near Mount Vernon Academy, where he was a student. He practiced incessantly and by the time he graduated had become an accomplished performer on the instrument and was playing in a folk trio called The Sons of Thunder.

A shy child with a good singing voice, Jerry was a reluctant though popular soloist while very young. His experience as a scuba diver had led to an invitation to teach that skill at the youth camp where he met and worked with Summerour during their academy years, assisting camp director Bill Dopp. As Hoyle's voice matured, he was encouraged to use it in the ministry, and following graduation from Mount Pisgah Academy in 1962, he enrolled as a theology major at SMC.

He was a classmate of Hoyle at Mount Pisgah Academy and was only a casual acquaintance with Summerour, having met him during visits to the youth camp. When Vollmer enrolled at Atlantic Union College following graduation from MPA in 1962, he and Hoyle kept in touch.

The three men started to sing American folk music and arrangements of spirituals and other religious music to the delight of both students and faculty at the college. It was at this time that Vollmer, wanting to do more than just sing, took a crash course in playing the guitar from Summerour, who, in addition to playing the banjo, was also a skilled guitarist.

One of the programs presented by the center, a variety show called "The Best Saturday Night in Town," became a showplace where the trio, which would engage in humorous repartee and Southern style kidding between numbers, became a highlight. When the semester and their stay in England ended, they were given the "New Gallery Personality Award," an acknowledgement of the pivotal role they had played in the center's programs.

Before the end of the end of the semester they traveled to France where they worked with Gisela Willy, a visiting professor at Newbold, and her French-singing choir, to record music for use by the French Educational Ministry and the French Voice of Prophecy broadcast. They recorded some Appalachian folk music and also accompanied the choir with their instruments on some of its numbers.

At this time they changed their name to The Wedgwood Trio when it was discovered that another group in the South was using their first name. Having just come from England, they decided the name had a classy ring to it and would suggest high quality folk music.⁵

Word of their success in England preceded them to the SMC campus and when they played at the first college program of the year, a hootenanny, they were a hit with the students. Although many of the older generation were initially unsure about them and their music, Vollmer's aunt, Dorothy Ackerman, and Marvin Robertson, chair of the music department, along with Jack Castle, academic dean, encouraged and supported them.

During the school year they had worked with Jim Hannum, a teacher at SMC, to record and produce their first record, My Lord, What a Morning. Hannum, who had considerable expertise in recording, worked tirelessly with them for weeks and late into the night, serving as both their sound engineer and producer in a makeshift studio with three microphones.

When the next school year started, the trio resumed singing, and began selling their record at concerts. The sales of the record and playing of it on religious music radio stations led to increased popularity and more requests to perform.

Their success in Texas led to another invitation from Richards to work with him at a second VOP evangelistic series in Hinsdale, Illinois, in the second semester. Richards noted their effectiveness in reaching young people and asked them to join with him and Del Delker that summer during their tours to camp meetings on behalf of the VOP. By the end of August 1967, travel with the VOP, combined with other appointments, totaled eighty thousand miles. It had been an exhausting, yet exhilarating eight months.

The reaction was visceral, surfacing more than any other time during their travels with Richards and Delker that summer. After one introductory performance in an evening meeting at a Mid-western camp meeting, Richards was angrily confronted by the conference official in charge of music for the meetings. At the end of a discussion that continued into the early morning hours, Richards was told the trio would not be allowed to perform at the youth meetings the next day.

This action, the most extreme that summer, was a blow to the trio as well as Delker and Richards. All during those travels they had to deal with objections over the music, the group's attire (matching double-breasted blue blazers with ties and gray slacks), Vollmer's naturally blond hair (thought to be bleached), and the "girls" who accompanied them (Hoyle's wife and Richards' wife and daughter).

In spite of the criticisms, both Richards and Delker later talked about how they had personally enjoyed working with the trio and the positive impact it had had on the young people that summer during their travels in thirteen states and two provinces in Canada.

That fall, the trio, now based in California, continued its busy schedule. The VOP and Bill Dopp, who was working with Adventist youth in Southern California, helped find jobs for Vollmer and Hoyle so that they could be in the area while Summerour pursued his medical studies at Loma Linda University.

Because of their work and studies, they limited performances to the weekends. Secular Saturday evening concerts were sellouts, large numbers of records were being sold at these events and in Adventist bookstores and income from concert fees and royalties was substantial.

By the summer of 1969, however, a decline in the size of audiences and a drop in record sales was noticeable. In mainstream music, edgier sounds in rock music and more sophisticated folk music were emerging as the new rage with young audiences.

With the approach of a new decade, Hoyle and Summerour felt the trio should experiment with and incorporate some of these newer trends into their performances. They believed this would revive waning interest in their group and broaden their appeal to young people both in and outside the church, creating expanded opportunities for evangelism.

They proposed including more rhythmic activity by adding percussion instruments, using electric keyboards and amplified string instruments, and singing songs with more thought-provoking lyrics about challenging issues developing in the church and society. Vollmer, however, became increasingly uneasy as these changes began to be implemented.

For him, the new approach was a departure from what they had wanted to do as a group when they had started five years earlier. The newer music conveyed a message of anger and rebellion that stood in sharp contrast with the music of hope and affirmation they had been singing.

He was troubled over what he felt would be a compromise of his principles if he continued with the group and, after discussing his concerns with the other two, withdrew. It was a troubling development for all of the trio, the end of an experience that had created extremely close personal bonds and many satisfying memories.

Although Evans' life experience of growing up in California and his age differed from that of the other two men, musical aspects meshed surprisingly well from the start. Evans now became part of a new group called Wedgwood, one that began forging a new identity, a more contemporary sound.

Electric string instruments were added and Hoyle's acoustic string bass was replaced with an electric one. Electric keyboards were added, played by John Waller, a medical student who had attended MPA with Hoyle and Vollmer and been at SMC when the trio was there. When the transformed group played the concert at LSC previously scheduled for the older trio, some in the audience did not like the changes and began leaving during the program.

Percussionists and other studio musicians joined the group for recording sessions. The first album released by Chapel Records under the Wedgwood name, Country Church, with its soft rock feel, drew decidedly mixed reviews.

Although their concert created some controversy on that campus, it was a concert given at Pacific Union College a month later that became a turning point for them. At the time of the concert, the students responded as they had at WWC, with increasing enthusiasm as the program progressed, and then gave them a rousing ovation at the end, a response the group viewed as an affirmation of what they were doing.

Shortly after their return home from PUC, however, they received a letter from F.O. Rittenhouse, president of the college. In it, he revealed that although the music department had unanimously urged a cancellation of the scheduled performance prior to their coming, the school had not done so, feeling it should honor its agreement with them. Rittenhouse concluded his letter by stating the action of the school: that in light of its performance and standards, the group would not be invited back for another appearance on campus. Additionally, he noted that a copy of his letter was being sent to all of the other Adventist colleges and universities.

Rittenhouse's letter, distorted news about the group, and false rumors about supposed drug use resulted in fewer and fewer invitations for concerts.

Wedgwood felt it was speaking to cultural issues with thought-provoking lyrics and finely crafted music suitable for Adventist youth in the 1970s, an era characterized by rebellion against authority and the status quo. Increasing numbers of Adventists began, however, to see them as facilitating turmoil within the church's youth.

They began working on an album titled Dove that would present their best work. For a year, they rewrote and rescored some of the songs and had multiple recording sessions, redoing numerous tracks in their quest for perfection.

In the midst of that year, they were invited to present a concert at the Loma Linda University Church in September 1972. They decided that the concert would be recorded and released as a live-concert album. A small orchestra was formed and orchestrations for a dozen of their numbers were prepared to complement other numbers that they would accompany with their usual string, keyboard, and percussion instruments.

The church was packed with an audience that had come with high expectations. From the start of the concert, the performers could sense the growing excitement in the crowd and responded with one of the best performances of their lives. A third of the way through the concert, the audience began applauding at the end of numbers, an unheard of reaction in Adventist church sanctuaries at that time.

The euphoria following the obvious success of the program vanished a few days later when the Loma Linda city newspaper panned the concert in a review headlined "Wedgwood: Shall We Dance?" When the album of that concert was released a few weeks later, the university church requested that its name not be mentioned in the liner of the jacket. Yet another blow followed when release of the Dove album was recalled from Adventist bookstores a month later.

In the earliest days of the formation of Wedgwood there had been talk of it becoming a full-time entity and possibly breaking into mainstream music outside the church. The realities of what it would take to pursue that course and now the loss of support from within the church that had been its base ended that possibility. They now made moves to begin their post-Wedgwood lives.

Hoyle, who had been teaching at Loma Linda Academy, went through a traumatic divorce about the time of the group's ending. He briefly worked as a medical social worker and then enrolled in a doctoral program in clinical psychology. After completing a Ph.D. in that area, he did a post-doctoral internship in the LLU department of psychiatry and eventually became a clinical faculty member there, a position he still holds.

After leaving the trio in 1969, Vollmer continued to teach Bible. He completed an M.Div. in the seminary at Andrews University and then taught at Greater Miami Academy in Florida. In 1982, after serving as a pastor in North Carolina, he accepted an invitation to work as a pastor/evangelist in Galway, Ireland. Working in this enchanting part of that country proved to be a wonderful experience for him and his family. In 1987, they returned to San Diego, California, where he was senior pastor in the El Cajon church.

As a warm-up for the convention appearance, they performed in Vollmer's church two weeks before the concert. The positive reaction at the church proved to be a prelude to that afforded them at the convention, which ended in a standing ovation. It was a resounding affirmation of the role they had played in the lives of their audience in another age, when both the trio and those in attendance had been younger.

The reuniting of the three men also meant more than just making music. The comments and humorous interaction between numbers, which had ended when the trio had disbanded, now resumed. Summerour recently observed:

Still unsure about whether to continue and, if so, at what level, they accepted an invitation to perform during alumni weekend at Southern Adventist University, their alma mater. Because of the enthusiastic reception the trio received at this appearance, they made personal and financial commitments to continue as a trio.

After the concerts, countless persons from all age groups have surrounded the group, asking for autographs and telling them about the important role their music has played in their lives and spiritual journey. Although they received apologies from persons who had criticized the group years earlier, occasionally some older church leaders and members let them know they have not changed their minds, despite the sweeping changes that have happened in church music in the last forty years.

A week before going to Newbold, they performed at the General Conference Session in Utrech in the Netherlands. While three decades earlier they had been viewed with alarm by many in the Adventist church, they were now featured at the largest church gathering in history and greeted with applause, no less, after their numbers.

Two years later, in March 1997, the General Conference invited the trio to give a concert at GC headquarters. They played for an appreciative and applauding SRO audience that included the GC president. When they performed the following month at Leoni Meadows campground in Northern California, PUC president Malcolm Maxwell publicly invited them to return to the campus, reversing the stance taken by the college president nearly thirty years earlier.⁶

In an article by Reger Smith in the Adventist Review in 2005, Del Delker spoke about her work with the trio in the 1960s: "I was about as popular as a skunk at a picnic. They wouldn't let us sing at the adult camp meeting tent, only with the youth. Now, of course, when I join with the Wedgwood on their reunion tours, they won't let us sing with the youth . . . too old-fashioned."⁸