Big night for even smallest outfit

Odessa High School’s band director is competing against spring sports as he prepares for the biggest event of the year.

Five of Craig Holman’s musicians will be playing baseball in Yakima today.

That leaves him with a band of 20 to march in Spokane’s Lilac Festival Armed Forces Torchlight Parade.

But wait. Three musicians are members of the Odessa girls softball team, which plays today in Kettle Falls. If they lose their first game, they’ll come to Spokane. But a victory means a second game, “so the chances of them marching in the parade are questionable,” Holman said.

With 17 musicians, the contingent from Odessa – about 70 miles west of Spokane – would be a tenth the size of bands from some urban schools. “Mead’s drum line is about the size of our band,” Holman said.

Small band or large, marching in the Lilac parade remains a big deal, as it has been since the 1940s. (The first parade, in 1938, is described in a Lilac Festival history as “small,” with a single float and no queen.)

Thirty-nine bands are scheduled to march in tonight’s parade, which will also features 22 floats (including Odessa’s), antique cars, police motorcycles, clowns, princesses, politicians – more than 200 entries in all. It all gets under way at 7:45 p.m., with the boom of a cannon and a flyover by a KC-135.

There won’t be any umbrellas blocking the view when that Air Force tanker flies over; the National Weather Service is calling for clear skies and temperatures in the upper 70s at parade time, after today’s predicted high of 89 degrees.

The parade marshal is Gen. Arthur Lichte, a familiar face. A former wing commander at Fairchild Air Force Base, he was parade marshal in 2002.

The four-star general now leads Air Mobility Command at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois.

Putting on the parade is a year-round effort for a cadre of volunteers, said Cecelia Stephens, Lilac Festival president.

“When this is done, we start working on the next one,” said Stephens, whose daughter represented University High School as a 1992 Lilac princess.

The parade will be broadcast live on KHQ Channel 6 – a departure from recent years in which it was televised only on cable television.

Holman said many Odessa residents who can’t make it to Spokane will be watching on TV, hoping for a glimpse of the tiny band and the town float. The band has been practicing for a couple of weeks, marching down city streets and avoiding blocks where Holman knows there are homes with babies.

“Our march time, a lot of times, is their nap time,” he explained.

Little kids – future band members – often march alongside, said Holman, who has taken bands to Lilac parades every year since 1981, when he became band director at Harrington High School.

“It’s our one big parade, and it’s big for the whole community,” he said.