Windermere resident sings at Fenway Park

When Bill Squires attended sporting events, he sang along with the national anthem from the stands. 

The quality of his voice always attracted the attention of the people around him. Then one day, when reading a local newspaper in Massachusetts in 2001, he saw the Pittsfield Astros were seeking people to sing the national anthem before the games, so he called in to see what would happen. 

“I decided to take a chance,” he said. “I said, ‘Why not try it?'”

Without an interview or even an audition, the team scheduled him to sing before a game. 

His entire family came to that first game, where 275 people heard him sing. Afterward, a stranger shook his hand and told Squires how much he enjoyed his performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Squires enjoyed it so much that he decided to send cassettes of his singing out to other teams and organizations. Some teams asked him to come, while others haven’t responded. 

But this summer — 15 years after that first performance — Squires, a part-time Windermere resident, received the email of a lifetime. He was getting ready to sing the national anthem at a baseball game when he happened to check his email on his phone. One email in particular caught his eye, and he questioned it for a moment. 

It was from the director of entertainment for the Boston Red Sox, asking him if he would perform “God Bless America” at Fenway Park on Father’s Day. They had seen his work from tapes and CDs he had sent in over the years and wanted to find a father who would perform that day. 

“When I saw the email and read it, I started crying, knowing it was a dream come true,” he said. 

Squires performed in front 37,214 fans at Fenway Park for the seventh-inning stretch. Friends tuning on various local networks told him that they watched him perform on TV. 

The experience was one Squires said he will never forget. 

It was the largest crowd for which Squires had ever performed; however, it was one of his many performances before a large gathering of people. 

Since his performance for the Pittsfield Astros in 2001, Squires has performed everywhere from the Amway Center to the University of Pennsylvania. He has performed “God Bless America,” “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “America the Beautiful,” “O Canada” and “Hatikvah” — the Israeli national anthem. 

Squires is from Massachusetts, where he worked in nearby Connecticut at a family company — Esquire Gas Products Company — for most of his career. 

During high school, he developed a love for singing when he was a part of a high-school choral group. When he left for college at the University of Pennsylvania, he found he missed singing so much that he joined the University of Pennsylvania Choral Society. 

Since 2003, Squires has participated in Mak’hela, the Jewish Chorus of Western Massachusetts. 

Following his retirement in 2012, Squires and his wife, Nancy, are making the transition to becoming full-time Windermere residents. 

Contact Jennifer Nesslar at  [email protected].

SQUIRES SIGHTINGS

Fenway Park, Boston Red Sox

University of Massachusetts

University of Pennsylvania

Amway Center, Orlando Solar Bears

Massachusetts Walk to End Alzheimer’s

Virginia Tech

Quinnipiac University

Jewish Federation of Western Massachusetts and Jewish Endowment Foundation of Western Massachusetts Annual Meeting