Praying The Rosary On A Contemporary Note
by Diane Morey Hanson / Catholic Net
October 03, 2001
When Lauren Wilke of St. Paul, Minn., slips The Rosary Tapes cassette into her car’s player, the kids stop picking on each other and calm right down.
That’s close to a miracle since her five are ages 7, 12, 14, 16 and 17.
It is like a cozy warm blanket, she added. It makes praying the rosary so comforting, not a chore at all, and it is a really good example for my kids.
Those are just the kinds of comments that bolster the spirits of Bill Gildenstern and his business partner John Giaier. The two head up Saginaw-based GTTechnoTracks, the leading jingle-makers for network television, with clients including Ford dealerships, AT&T, and Burger King. Five years ago they were headliners on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
The partners, along with their wives Kelly Gildenstern and Debbie Giaier, produced The Rosary Tapes nine years ago and now offer a set of three CDs , one for each set of mysteries of the rosary. The Gildensterns are parents of three grown children and parishioners at St. Thomas Aquinas in Saginaw. The Giaiers, parishioners of St. Columban’s in Birmingham, have three teenagers.
Their new website, up only since May, allows folks to sample portions of or download the entire Joyful Mysteries for use on a CD or MP3 player. Within just a few weeks they registered 20,000 downloads.
And it’s no wonder the musical prayers are so popular, not just with the middle-aged and older folks, but with the younger generations as wel , the meditations and prayers are set to sounds reminiscent of those from Paul Anka to Eric Clapton to the ballads of Led Zeppelin.
Tough Times
But things weren’t always so successful for Bill Gildenstern, 55. Catholic-school-educated at St. Agatha in Redford and Cardinal Mooney High at Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit, Bill considered the priesthood for a time. His mother encouraged him to pray about it, but he eventually decided that was not his vocation.
He became a disc jockey for WRIF in Detroit in the early ‘70s and was soon Detroit’s top-rated DJ. It was during that time, he said. I started slowly drifting from the Church.
In 1976, the year he left WRIF in a contract dispute, Bill recalled, I woke up one day and discovered that God was real. That day was Dec. 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Sitting in the quiet of St. Mary’s Church, Redford, he was consumed with the realization of God’s reality.
When you discover all of a sudden that God is real, everything changes and makes you a little crazy, Bill said. I went to confession and stayed for Mass.
While his spiritual life was back on track, his career was not. He left his DJ job without another prospect. I pumped gas at an AMOCO station, made lockers for the Detroit Free Press, even drove a truck, he said. I had a wife and three kids to support.
In 1982 Bill founded a media ad agency which became extremely successful, but by 1991 he had to sell it because his health had deteriorated. He tried his hand at producing a TV show and writing movie scripts. But I couldn’t stay awake during the day and I couldn’t sleep at night, he said. It wasn’t until two years later that his near-fatal low thyroid was diagnosed and treated.
Prayerful Direction
After attending a retreat at the Franciscan Retreat House in Wisconsin, praying the rosary took on a new significance for Bill and he found plenty of time for it while driving from his home in Saginaw to his friend John Giaier’s house in Troy. There’s a lot of I-75 between the two of us, he laughed. It’s about two rosaries to get from my house to John’s.
The two had known one another since the early ‘70s when John started a company called Elephant Recording in Eastpointe, making jingles for auto dealers and revamping sound systems in area Catholic churches. Bill often did voice-overs for his friend.
Also a lifelong Catholic, John said he remembered bringing his breakfast to school in one hand and his lunch in the other as he attended Mass each morning at St. Matthew’s on Detroit’s East Side.
John worked in a recording studio as a teen, played guitar and aspired to be a great singer. I was surrounded by great singers like Aretha Franklin, he said. The way I learned to sing was by praying.
It was during one of Bill’s rosary-praying trips to Troy that his beads got stuck in the track of the car seat. There must be a better way to pray the rosary, he reasoned.
While sitting at his desk a short time later, his audio equipment lining the wall behind him, Bill began to pray, Lord, all my life I’ve done what I’ve wanted to do. Now I want to do what You want me to do. Please tell me what You want me to do, Lord.
He had a sudden urge to turn around. It was like someone yanked my head around, Bill recalled. I was staring at my audio studio. That’s when the idea of the rosary tapes came to me. God told me what He wanted me to do.
Bill figured he and his wife Kelly, who came into the Church by choice, not by marriage, she said, when the couple wed in 1968 , could write the lyrics.
The two recorded the third joyful mystery with Bill playing Silent Night on the keyboard. They took their sample and idea for producing a full set of rosary tapes to friend John Giaier.
Moving Moment
John didn’t want any part of it, Bill remembered.
I thought he was crazy, recalled John. I thought, ‘This guy has flipped his lid!’ What would our clients think? They’d think we were some kind of religious fanatics!
But Bill wouldn’t take no for an answer. He told John to bring his wife in.
She came in, and after listening for about 10 minutes she started crying, said John. I thought, Whoa, there is something very personal and powerful about this.’
The words were so beautiful and so moving, said Debbie Giaier. They moved me so much I just started crying.
She said one of the songs is about the soul living forever. It brings me comfort when thinking about my dad who passed away nine years ago.
Debbie said their children, 18, 16 and 14, love the tapes too. Teens memorize so much of what they hear in their music and you don’t know if some of it might get them going in a wrong direction. These tapes are so refreshing. People actually wear them out. We feel we are making a difference in people’s lives.
And the letters they get indicate just that. One woman, whose husband of 54 years passed away, wrote, I will not have to say the rosary alone anymore.
Another person requested a rush order of the tapes for a 93-year-old grandfather and later wrote the Gildensterns and Giaiers that, because of a stroke and a couple of mild heart attacks, the grandfather found it more and more difficult to pray the rosary. Within days he had and was enjoying the tapes. The tapes became a very important part of his days. He died March 9. As he was dying, he wanted one of the tapes playing.
The letters are very touching to the tapes’ creators. First I was doing this all for God, said Bill. But God is really funny that way. Anytime we try to do something nice for God, we wind up doing something nice for another person.
Spreading the Devotion
News of the tapes spread through the media including a multitude of newspaper articles. The story was picked up on Paul Harvey’s radio program in 1993. That same year The Joyful Mysteries received an Emmy nomination for Best Pop Gospel Album. Well over 45,000 sets of The Rosary Tapes have been sold.
About six months ago, inspired by numerous requests for CDs, Bill and John remastered their music and recut some of their parts to put The Rosary Tapes on a set of three compact discs. Because Bill had been sick when the tapes were first produced, he said, We went into the glorious mysteries and did major surgery. I recut all my parts. I could do them now and really sound glorious.
And when they heard through the grapevine that younger people were listening to the tapes, too, the idea for the website became a reality.
They have the ability to listen to and download the entire Joyful Mysteries, said John. It’s on us.
Among the 20,000-plus downloads that have already taken place are some from public schools. We’ve gotten two calls, said John. One was from a music teacher in Flint, the other from a computer teacher in the Kalamazoo area. The computer teacher told him her whole class downloaded the Joyful Mysteries. When he asked if it was a parochial school, she said, No, that’s why I can’t tell you who I am.
A Package and Prayers
When a set of tapes or CDs is ordered, the product isn’t the only thing the customer receives.
We pray over all the tapes and lay hands on them once they are in the package before they are mailed, said Kelly Gildenstern. We pray for a miracle in the life of that family, through the intercession of Mary and for the glory of Jesus.
Lauren Wilke, from St. Paul, witnessed the tape makers in action nearly a decade ago. She became friends with the Gildensterns when she lived in Michigan and was a patient at Covenant Hospital in Saginaw where Kelly served as a hospital chaplain for 12 years.
Lauren walked into their house one day as they were rushing off to pray over the tapes being sent. It wouldn’t matter if there were a thousand packages going out, they would stop what they were doing and pray over each one, she said. You know, some people just say they do things like that. These folks really do.
And these folks also pray that God will continue to direct their ministry.
This whole thing has been an incredible blessing, said Kelly.
Bill said their primary goal is to just get people to pray a little more often. He added that, if there was one thing he wanted to be quoted as saying, it was: It don’t hurt to pray!
For more about The Rosary Tapes call 800-876-7279, e-mail questions@rosarytapes.com or check out the website below where you can also hear samples or download the entire Joyful Mysteries.
This article originally appeared in Credo. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.