Editor's Note: This is the fifth in our Faith in Action series of stories exploring faith-based and faith-inspired works, the people accomplishing them, and the connections with the community they are creating. The series is supported by the Fetzer Institute.

When young Bob Rowe, still in his teens, earned his first paycheck, he knew just how he wanted to spend it. He bought a guitar. 

“Painting was my first passion, but when I heard the musician Ric Massey play folk music on his guitar, I fell in love with it,” Rowe, now 68, says. “I had had several years of piano lessons by then, so I understood music. I was able to teach myself how to play the guitar.”

Rowe was raised in a family with five brothers and sisters in Battle Creek. Along with his passion for music, Rowe had a growing passion for his faith over the years. 

Bob's first nursing home programs were here at Calhoun County medical care facility in Battle Creek“I was raised as a devout Catholic,” he says. “My parents were very progressive — they were gangbusters with all the changes happening in the Catholic church. They didn’t just have faith; they practiced their faith.”

It was an approach to life that the young Rowe adopted for himself. Taking lessons from his aunt since age 10, he painted religious paintings while singing along with recordings by the musical trio Peter, Paul, and Mary. He considered joining the priesthood. 

“But I didn’t like all the rules that went along with being a priest,” Rowe says. “I was a rebel in high school, and I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do with my life.”

What he did like was that guitar — and he was getting good at playing it. Surely there was a way to incorporate music — and his faith — into his adult life. 

“I got friendly with Ric Massey, and he let me play at the clubs on his breaks,” Rowe says. “I pestered the local club owners for jobs until Ric connected me to his agent.”

Bob Rowe and the Green Valley Boys play music for residents of Park Place Assisted Living in Kalamazoo.It was the first step forward in a musical career, but a second and bigger step came when Rowe connected with a bigger agent in Chicago. 

“I was in my early 20s by then,” he says. “That was in the '70s and '80s. And this agent sent me all over the country to all kinds of clubs and piano bars and coffee houses and folk music festivals. It was a brutal schedule. I played piano and guitar and sang. There were good and bad nights, but I never felt like it was rewarding — I never felt at home in the club scene.”

Something was missing. 

“I still had that spiritual voice inside,” Rowe says. And it wanted to be heard. 

It was around 1976, when Rowe’s grandmother, who had lived with the Rowe family for 18 years, received communion from a Catholic nun, a Sister of Saint Joseph, that Rowe made a connection between his two passions. 

As he watched his grandmother take communion and connect with the Sister, “a lightbulb went on,” Rowe says. 

“I thought — this is why I’m here. I saw this transformation in people, among the elderly, and in nursing homes, when we combined music and ministry. I wanted to be of service to the elderly.”

Bob Rowe in the tabloids.As the combination of music and ministry continued to take shape in Rowe’s mind, Rowe signed a contract with World Library Publications in Chicago to publish Catholic hymnals, missalettes, recordings, and other publications. He recorded his first two singles, “Love IS All That Matters” (1974), and “Don’t Let It End Like This” (1978), the first of what would over coming years add up to more than 20 recordings. 

Rowe added nursing homes to his music tours. He sang to the elderly, the visually impaired, the developmentally disabled, veterans in VA hospitals, to audiences consisting of those who are too often marginalized. His path forward was becoming ever more clear. 

“Singing at the clubs, places like that, was increasingly leaving me dissatisfied,” he says. “It was just a way to pay the bills. I was disillusioned with that life.”

Rowe was able to get a grant to develop a music program specifically to perform in senior facilities. 

Bob Rowe, far right, and the Green Valley Boys perform for residents of Park Place Assisted Living in Kalamazoo..“It was just for one year,” he says. “That was in 1986, and when the year was over, the program folded. I had traveled around the state singing in nursing homes, and at the end of the year, I was thinking how to create something more significant from this — and how to get the funding for it.”

Rowe approached the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation for help. 

“I met with the executive director there at that time, Russell Gabier, and he was wonderful,” Rowe says. “It was a hard road to find funding, but he thought it was a great idea and offered me seed money if I could set up such a program and turn it into a business. The rest is history!”

With that seed money and Gabier’s encouragement, Rowe founded the nonprofit, Renaissance Enterprises, in 1988. The organization operates in Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Tennessee, and New York as well as some neighboring states.

Bob Rowe and the Green Valley Boys play music for residents of Park Place Assisted Living in Kalamazoo.“We bring high-quality arts and music programs to the residents of senior care and related long-term care facilities,” Rowe says. “Music, dance, puppetry, live art, we bring it to the elderly to assist in healing and ease suffering.”

As Rowe continued to gather funding for the nonprofit, he reminded anyone who would listen: “This could be us. This will be us. There is so much loneliness in these facilities.”

Seeing the joy light up the faces of his audience, Rowe knew he had found his life path. At times, he would perform solo and other times with groups such as the Green Valley Boys. His work with the elderly gained notoriety and funding. Rowe was written up as “leaving a lucrative music career” to perform instead in senior facilities in publications such as Time magazine, USA Today, Catholic Digest, Daily Word, National Enquirer, and Detroit News. He appeared on national news programs such as CNN and PBS. 

“They said I was leaving a lucrative career, but to me, it was leaving an unsatisfying career,” he says. “The contemporary Christian music world was brutal. I wasn’t right-wing enough to fit in. I was Catholic but not an evangelical. I was following my passion to make a difference with my music in the lives of these people.”

For a time, Rowe straddled both worlds, moving to Nashville, Tennessee, during the 1990s, where he gained more record deals, and recorded several more albums, even as he continued to travel around the Midwest region to perform in senior communities. 

“About ten years ago, I moved back to Kalamazoo,” Rowe says. “The Gilmore Foundation wanted me back in town.”

Bob with Mother Teresa letters and awards.Rowe returned with a list of new funding sources, a new list of recordings, and new connections. He had also earned a respectable list of awards for his work. Arguably, his most treasured award is the prestigious Mother Teresa Laureate in 2006.

“I first wrote to Mother Teresa in the 1980s. It was like a catharsis as I shared with her my frustration with secular music when I wanted more to work with seniors,” Rowe says. “And she wrote back! I was flabbergasted! There it was, about six weeks later, a yellowed letter from India in my mailbox. She liked what I was doing with my music.”

With that, a 15-year correspondence began. Rowe never got to meet Mother Teresa in person, but he treasured each letter she wrote back to him. 

Other awards included the Giraffe Award — for sticking his neck out to create such a unique music program for elders — and the International Peace Award. With Rowe’s growing success and national attention, Renaissance Enterprises accumulated more funding from such organizations as the Arcus Foundation, the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo, Battle Creek Community Foundation, the Dorothy U. Dalton Foundation, the Kalamazoo Community Foundation, the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, the Harold and Grace Upjohn Foundation, and many more. 

Bob Rowe with mentor and friend Joan Baez“I also had some great mentors,” he adds. “I’m not impressed by famous people. Authentic people impress me. Joan Baez was one of those authentic people, and she helped me understand how to be authentic. I met her during a road tour, and she became a mentor. We still keep in touch.”

His recording of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” reached the number 10 slot on the folk music charts in 2010. Rowe often opened for other music shows nationwide. 

A half-hour documentary about Rowe, the Green Valley Boys, and Renaissance Enterprises aired in August 2021 on the PBS Network. Produced by Eric Hennig and Vague Productions, the documentary was filmed at senior care and other facilities around West Michigan. The film opens with Rowe’s song, “Higher Ground.”

“It went over well, so a young filmmaker from Indiana called me about doing a longer piece about how Renaissance Enterprises came to be,” Rowe says. “It will be called ‘An Instrument of Healing’ and should air sometime this summer or fall on PBS. It will be about the value of the arts for seniors.”

Bob Rowe and the Green Valley Boys play music for residents of Park Place Assisted Living in Kalamazoo.Rowe has witnessed what the arts can do for the elderly every time he performs for a senior audience. The award of what he sees in those faces never ages. 

“It has been shown in studies on patients with Alzheimer’s that they can remember song lyrics when all else fades,” he says. “I remember one woman who was slumped in her wheelchair at the end of a semi-circle where I was performing. I kept singing to her, but I couldn’t get a response. I sang to her again and again, and about the fifth time, she looked up and gave me a big wink. After that, she would go up and down the aisle at the facility, singing ‘This Little Light of Mine.’ 

"That’s why I do this. Persistence pays off. When you see those smiles, you hear them sing along with you, clapping and laughing, that’s why I do this and will keep doing this. I have no plans to ever retire. It’s not good to just sit around — I’m going to go with my boots on, and I’ll go singing.”

Asked if he has any regrets about how his life and his life work have developed, Rowe shakes his head. 

“None,” he says. “I never married, never had children, because I have been so obsessed with music. I know people who are miserable all their lives because they did not follow their dream. I have made a lot of sacrifices, but I found the perfect way to use my gift. I had a burning desire all my life, and I followed it. I have the heart of a priest and the soul of a musician — that is how I have lived my life.”