Vernon Klaudt

News Obituary Article

Vernon Klaudt, 76, nurtured family band

By HOLLY CRENSHAW

The oldest son in his family's singing group, Vernon Klaudt was its rock-solid bass player, its crowd-pleasing emcee, its go-get-'em promoter and its booming bottom note.

For four decades, he crisscrossed the country in a custom-designed motor coach performing with the Klaudt Indian Family, an unlikely looking group whose attention-grabbing native garb belied their Southern gospel sound.

"The sound we originally came up with was from Vernon," said his brother Melvin Klaudt of Lawrenceville. "He managed us, he picked the songs, he structured the songs, he gave us our first voice lessons.

"Vernon added to the bulk of the success we had as a family, and of course, the bass parts he sang were always the foundation for the rest of us."

The Rev. Vernon R. Klaudt, 76, of Suwanee died of cancer Saturday at Peachtree Christian Hospice. The funeral is 11 a.m. Thursday at Mount Paran Central Church of God. Crowell Brothers, Peachtree Chapel is in charge of arrangements.

He was born on the Fort Berthold Indian reservation in North Dakota. His mother, Lillian Little Soldier Klaudt, was an Arikara-Mandan Indian and his father, the Rev. R. H. Klaudt, was a Church of God minister of German descent.

He started singing by the time he was 8 and performed with his parents as a trio at revivals throughout the Dakotas, Montana and Minnesota in the late 1930s.

At 14, he attended Bible Training School in Sevierville, Tenn., and sang with the Kingsman Four Quartet, then rejoined his parents as part of their now-extended family band, which moved its home base to Atlanta in the 1950s.

Often with his mother singing lead, the group performed at state fairs and glitzy professional venues, sometimes pulling off more than 400 dates a year. They owned their own record label, appeared on TV shows and shared the stage with such well-known gospel singers as Mahalia Jackson, with his nearly three-octave voice often grabbing the spotlight.

Throughout his peripatetic life, he picked up numerous college degrees, including a bachelor of divinity from Emory University and ultimately a Ph.D. in educational leadership from Georgia State University in 1982.

Starting in 1964, he spent 17 years teaching in Gwinnett County schools while still venturing out with the band weekends and summers. He worked two more years at Mount Paran Christian School before starting his own ministry. He traveled to more than 100 countries on six continents, often focusing on the needs of the indigenous people he met, before declining health kept him home.

After returning to his reservation for his grandmother's funeral and witnessing economic blight and alcoholism, he gave up his comfortable educator's life, said his wife, Betty Klaudt of Suwanee.

"Vernon saw the plight of his Indian people and realized how much he had accomplished and how much he had benefited from education," she said. "And he said, 'This is not fair. I want to give back.' "

Survivors also include a son, Kim Klaudt of Cleveland, Tenn.; two daughters, Karla Bailey of Hull and Keribeth Pruett of Colbert; two other brothers, Ray Klaudt of San Marcos, Calif., and Ken Klaudt of Norcross; a sister, Ramona Carpenter of Dacula; five grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

© 2006 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution