Band Champs U-High Grads Get Together To Remember Past Performances 20 Years Ago

When looking back, it’s the unexpected detail that can send you reeling. For the drum major of University High School’s 1980 marching band, that moment came upon turning the page of a scrapbook at the band’s 20th reunion.

“I saved this, too,” Janet Albert Minnick said when she saw a sheet of mimeographed music dotted with hand-drawn notes and neatly labeled “Let it be me.”

“Remember, we played this one at nationals,” she told Jackie Walrath Fitting, an old friend who had played the clarinet in the band.

“Yeah, it was the only slow song Mr. Green liked,” Fitting said.

Gary Green, University High School’s band director from 1976 to 1984, liked the piece enough to write his own arrangement, one suited to his marching band’s growing talent.

Then, he took the 163-member band more than 1,500 miles to compete in the 1980 Marching Bands of America National Championship in Whitewater, Wis. They placed fourth overall.

Three years later, Green, with a new U-Hi marching band, decided to try again. That year, the band brought home the championship title.

“What we did in Whitewater was magic,” Green told former students from both bands gathered at the high school on Saturday. “My life is rich beyond my wildest dreams to have that in my memory.”

Plenty of memories were shared in the school’s cafeteria on Saturday. Former students traveled from as far away as Utah for the U-Hi gathering. The day included the standard reunion fare - gossip over had who landed the best job, who had lunched on too many Big Macs, who had ended up married to their high school sweetheart - but more than that, the reunion was a tribute to Green’s leadership and to the trip of a lifetime.

“For a dinky high school like U-Hi to take nationals was just huge,” said Frank Tombarrelli, a baritone player from the 1980 band. “And it was all because of Mr. Green.”

The day’s most anticipated guest arrived from Miami just as the current U-Hi jazz band played the final bars of Maynard Ferguson’s “Chameleon.” Immediately, the room burst into hooting applause and many rushed forward for their hugs.

“I remember you all,” Green said during a speech later in the afternoon. “Even though the names are dim, you’re eyes aren’t.”

Green, who left U-Hi in 1984, is currently the director of bands at the University of Miami.

He is the only band director in U-Hi’s history to take a group to nationals.

“We did just about everything to get ourselves to Whitewater,” said Tim Orr, drum major for the 1983 band. “We sold candles, calendars, candy bars. We even hired ourselves out as slaves to rake leaves and hand out political fliers. I got bit by a Doberman passing out those fliers.”

The parents who organized the fund-raising effort knew they had to get creative to raise the more than $95,000 needed to carry the whole band across the country.

“In 1980 we sold bags of volcanic ash at the competition,” said Ada Cook, one of the leaders of the band parents’ organization. “We wrapped them up in cellophane packages and put stickers on them. Everyone back east really thought it something was rare. Here our kids were shoveling ash off the school parking lot every day before practice.”

Mount St. Helens had erupted just one month before the 1980 band was scheduled to perform at Whitewater. But even a natural disaster of unprecedented magnitude couldn’t deter the kids. They continued practicing, adhering as closely as possible to their rigorous schedule.

“We were very serious about marching band,” said Bill Carruthers, a trumpet player from the 1980 band. “We really wanted to shine at Whitewater.”

“What I tried to teach them through all the hard work was that life isn’t about winning,” Green said. “It is about selfless immersion in a process without consideration for the final product.”

Luckily for Green and the U-Hi band members, the final product was hot, even as they watched it on videotape 20 years later.

Despite the aging tape’s grainy pictures, Mike Jydstrup’s trumpet solo still soared, earning him fresh cheers from his fellow alumni. The drill looked sharp as the overhead camera captured the marchers moving smoothly from straight lines into curved formations.

Former band members watched closely, and tears flowed when the judges on the tape announced U-Hi as the winner.

After watching the video, the former band members enjoyed a barbecue and posed for group pictures.

Some who couldn’t attend the reunion sent in messages to be included in a memory book put together by the reunion’s organizers.

Dawn Roskelley Hummel, now living in Reno, Nev., shared her memory of drinking coffee and smoking cigars as a group watched the sun rise on their first day as national champions.

“Most of all,” she wrote, “I remember Mr. Green’s great pep talks - one part in particular concerned a mediocre contest performance we’d given just before nationals. He told us to play, not to win, but to give a gift from our hearts to the audience.”

It is safe to say that Gary Green and Whitewater gave University High School’s young band members a gift from the heart.