Obituary
In the care of Solemn OaksRaymond Pinter, 74, of Maple Bend, died Wednesday, July 29, 2026, at Corewell Health in Grand Rapids, and for forty of those seventy-four years he sang bass in the same barbershop quartet — which is to say he spent his life as the low, steady note the rest of the harmony leaned on.
He was born May 8, 1952, in Muskegon, the son of a foundry man, and went to work at a commercial print shop at nineteen with no plan to stay and stayed forty-one years. He ran the big offset presses, came home most nights with ink he could not scrub out of the creases of his hands, and could tell by the sound alone when a press was about to jam. He took early retirement when the shop went digital and the presses he loved were sold for scrap, a day he mentioned exactly once.
But the singing is what people knew him for. He joined the quartet in 1985 to fill an empty bass part just until they found somebody, and he was still filling it forty years later. They sang at the Memorial Day service, the tree lighting, the nursing home every Christmas, and more weddings and anniversaries than anyone kept count of. Raymond could not read a note of music and did not need to. He found the bass by feel, under everyone else, and held it there like a foundation.
He married Sharon Petroski in 1976. He coached Little League for a decade despite a documented inability to remember which kid was which, kept a garden mostly so he could give the tomatoes away, and was the man in the neighborhood you called when something needed fixing and you did not want to pay to have it fixed. He was quiet in a room until the fourth verse, and then he was unmistakable.
The quartet will sing at his funeral. They will be, as they have not been in forty years, one short.
He is survived by his wife of fifty years, Sharon; his children, Mark (Angela) Pinter of Rockford and Julie (Tom) Ackerman of Maple Bend; five grandchildren; his brother, Leon Pinter of Muskegon; and three men who will never again find that low note quite where they left it.
He was preceded in death by his parents, Stanley and Genevieve Pinter.