A Singer’s Life Comes Full Circle at the White House

Yes, Tom Tipton appreciates the symmetry of the story line: how as a 12-year-old kid in 1945 he shined shoes outside the White House, and how now as a 62-year-old man he’s been invited to sing Dec. 12 at the White House.

That’s your story, right there. As anyone can tell you, though, it’s usually the journey and not the destination that gives life its flavor. And so it is with Tipton. “Let me help you start it,” Tipton says, perhaps sensing my uncertainty as to which of the two big dots that connect his life would be the better jumping-off point.

He was born in Washington in 1933, in the middle of the Depression. His family lived 20 blocks from the White House, and one day his uncle built him a shoeshine box.

“I was shining shoes for 10 cents a shine, but there was a catch,” Tipton said. “I knew that the person would probably take a quarter out of his pocket and want 15 cents change. So I would start shining the shoes, snapping the rag and humming. I was a boy soprano when I was 12, and the humming kind of sounded good to the people, and I got that other 15 cents.”

Tipton earned a basketball scholarship from Morgan State University and eventually set his sights on the business world, leaving behind his boy soprano days but not a love for music--ultimately moving toward the jazz and gospel influences that his mother, a churchgoer and radio announcer, instilled in him.

In 1968, Tipton moved to Minneapolis to work for a federal jobs program. He was recruited by Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, whom Tipton had met while working on his presidential campaign. It would prove to be a pivotal relationship in Tipton’s life.

Tipton stayed a year at the jobs program before beginning his own advertising agency in 1969, a business he would maintain for 20 years. Midway through that tenure, on a bitterly cold day early in 1978, he received a phone call from Muriel Humphrey, telling him that Hubert had died. One of her husband’s requests, she told Tipton, was that he sing at his funeral.

He did, singing, “He’ll Understand and Say ‘Well Done.’ ” Seated next to him was a woman he’d never met, who introduced herself as Arvella Schuller from Orange County. Tipton remembered both of them being nervous, he because he was singing and she because her husband, the Rev. Robert Schuller, was going to speak at Humphrey’s funeral.

It was the chance meeting, Tipton said, that would change his life. After the funeral, Arvella Schuller gave Tipton a standing invitation to sing at Crystal Cathedral, if he ever got to California. In 1980, Tipton took her up on it. “I came out to sing in the old arboretum,” he said with a smile. “I expected to come only once, and now it’s been 16 years and 68 TV appearances later, and I’m still singing the old hymns.”

Tipton sang “I Come to the Garden Alone” in his first appearance. He cried afterward, moved by the audience’s warm response. He sang it at a second service, he said, and cried again.

Although he stepped up his singing appearances throughout the 1980s, he always returned to the agency in Minneapolis. After all, how could he give up his business?

“I recognized that something was happening to me, that my life was changing,” he said. “I realized as time went on the Lord was calling me and that people were making me understand I just didn’t have a talent, I had a gift. I realized that God was calling me to do something I had never thought of doing. He wanted me to give up the agency and sing the old hymns. My daughter said, ‘Dad, you can’t do that. You’ll never have a hit record singing old hymns.’ I said, ‘Jesus never had a hit record.’ ”

Six years ago, Tipton sold his agency and moved to Orange County, leaving behind good money, a Mercedes and a big house on an acre-and-a-half. “God said, ‘Time is up. Give it all up.’ ”

Today, Tipton lives in a modest Anaheim apartment not far from Crystal Cathedral. In addition to a nationwide singing schedule that still includes a couple performances a year at the Garden Grove church, he has recorded several compilations of hymnal standards--the kind that he says are increasingly being squeezed from modern hymn books. His Tipton Music Ministry also sponsors an annual scholarship for inner-city students.

“I recognize that God laid his hands on me that day that Hubert died,” Tipton said, still lanky at 6 feet 4 and with an athlete’s grace. “When I sat next to Arvella and when Robert Schuller spoke at Hubert’s funeral, I felt like Hubert was passing Robert Schuller on to me to put his arms around me so I would go and minister around the world to sing the old hymns.”

You could say that road has led to the White House.

With pianist Billy Wallace, Tipton will perform for 40 minutes on the afternoon of the 12th. He’s not sure who the audience will be, but he’s been asked to sing mostly carols. “I know I’m going to try and sneak in a hymn too,” he said.

I asked if he could picture the 12-year-old kid from 50 years ago, shining shoes outside the White House. He nodded and said he’s convinced God is rewarding him for staying with him throughout the years. It’s almost, Tipton said, as if God is showing him the “he can take me back to the White House any time he wants.”

For the first time in his life, Tipton says, the fuzziness is gone. The picture is crystal clear. “Life is better for me than it’s ever been, for the simple reason I know exactly what I’m supposed to do with my life. It’s to win souls for the Kingdom, singing the old hymns. Period.”

Dana Parsons’ columns appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.