KING'S BUSINESS PHOTO-INTERVIEW
TONY FONTANE/ What happens when a popular vocalist fin
Tony, first of all, tell us when, and where, were you born? September 18, 1927 — in Ann Arbor, Michigan. What did your mother and father do? Dad was a railroad foreman for the Michigan Central. He went to Chicago when I was only two years of age. What did your dad do in Chicago?
Well, as I mentioned, he was working as a foreman on the railroad before he found Christ as Saviour. Then he went to Moody Bible Institute. That’s when we moved to Chicago. How did he find Christ as Saviour? That is quite a story. You see, one of his favorites was the daughter of his sister-in-law, my mother’s sister. One
day he found out that she had been killed while playing along the train tracks. Actually she had been decapi tated. It was a terrible thing! When my father learned that both the en gineer and the brakeman were drunk and were responsible for the accident, he got a gun and a knife and started running down the tracks to find them. He was going to kill them. It just so happened — I say “ happened” but actually the Holy Spirit must have intervened — that he met a minister strolling along, who convinced him that he was on “ the wrong side of the tracks” so to speak. He invited Dad to services and, to make a long story short, Dad found Christ as Saviour. Had he had any religious experience be- for that? Yes. He and my mother were bom and reared as Roman Catholics. At first mother did not agree with his decision to become a Christian, as a matter of fact, it almost caused a separation, but after a couple of months Mother, too, found the Lord as her Saviour. Are your mother and dad still living? No. My mother passed away with can cer several years ago. But my father is still in mission work. He conducts the Grand Forks City Mission in North Dakota. He went there in 1939 for some evangelistic meetings and has been there ever since. Have you been up their to pay him a visit? I certainly have! On December 7, of last year, I sang in the Mission. Inci dentally, they had rented an armory, and it was 20 below zero when I was there. I suppose your dad gets very little for his service for the Lord in mission work. That’s putting it mildly. He has never ireceived a weekly pay check, to my knowledge. He lives to reach people with the gospel of Christ. I suppose, since your father has been in gospel ministry most of your life, that it was only natural that some day you would be in the Lord's work? Quite the opposite! Actually, I resent ed my father’s work. We had been poverty stricken for so long that I didn’t want to have any part of it! I just took Christianity for granted, as did some of my brothers; my sister TH E K IN G 'S BUSINESS
With Phil Kerr at the controls, Tony tells his testimony to the radio audience
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