‘Back then we all had crew cuts,” singer T.A. Strader told the audience. “Back then we all had hair.”

There were lots of jokes about aging, but when the songs began, the octogenarian singers filled the room with the exuberance of the concerts they staged when they were college kids.

The Crusaders Quartet are back together to celebrate the 60th anniversary of their first tour to Hawaii.

In August 1958 the young men from a small Indiana Bible school boarded a prop plane in Oakland, Calif., for the nine-hour trip to Hawaii. During the flight they were asked to entertain the passengers, and so, dressed in matching black wool suits, they stood at the bulkhead and belted out Christian songs.

This week they’re singing those same songs with the same arrangements, though perhaps now with a deeper appreciation of their meaning:

“It’s not an easy road but Jesus walks beside me”

Paul Brennan, Paul Robbins, T.A. Strader and Ed Terui were students at Fort Wayne Bible College in 1957 when they were chosen to form a singing group that would travel the country to perform Christian songs and recruit new students, albeit in a very low-key way. “People saw us and learned where we went to school, and it planted a seed in their mind of what the school was about,” Brennan said. Classmate Ken Mays, now a professor of music theory, was their pianist and musical director.

The five performed together for three years until they graduated in 1960. They gave concerts three weekends a month and all summer long, traveling from gig to gig packed in Strader’s black Mercury — three in the front, two in the back with the amp for Robbins’ guitar riding in the middle. For their work on behalf of the college, the school granted them tuition waivers.

They roomed in church dormitories, played in tiny churches and tried to make the best of whatever piano was available.

“Sometimes you just hope all 88 keys on the piano are there and that some of them are in tune,” Mays said. “Sometimes you just avoid the upper and lower registers. One time in a little church in Kansas, I was playing and a mouse crawled out of the piano.”

Their trip to Hawaii was a highlight of those youthful days. On this reunion tour they’re performing at many of the same places the visited 60 years ago, including the Makiki Christian Church, where they sang earlier this week.

Over the years, the men have stayed in touch. Their first reunion was in 1992. They also got together for their 50th anniversary in 2008 and their 55th five years later. Brennan has lived in Hawaii for 37 years. Terui is from Kauai. Robbins lives in Chicago, Strader in Michigan and Mays is a professor in Los Angeles. They’re all staying at Brennan’s Kailua house this week. “We’re bumper to bumper, but we’re fine,” Brennan said.

They’re all grandfathers. They’re all devoted husbands. Brennan points out that, added all together, they’ve been married “250 happy years.” Two of the men have recently lost their wives, and they talk about their sadness in between singing songs that lift their spirits.

They’ve learned some new hymns that they’ve added to their set list, but mostly it’s the old ones they know so well, the ones they loved as college kids that have taken on new relevance now that they’ve earned the wisdom of experience, celebrated milestones and withstood heartache.

“No, no, it’s not an easy road, but Jesus walks beside me and brightens the journey,

and lightens every heavy load”

“It all came back to us quickly,” Brennan said. “We’ve sung these songs a thousand times. The harmonies flowed very easily.”

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.