A Visit to the Museum – XII
With the competitive drum corps seasons now completed for the year here in North America and in Europe, the staff of the Marching Pageantry Arts Museum is back at work. That work includes cataloging and storing of the items donated this year and also the tedious work of building a business presence in the national community, standardizing fonts in its business documents, and creating a website that is accessible and easy to navigate. And the museum is very fortunate to have the talents of Ernad Sisic, Tom Norton, Catherine Chandler, and Juliana Denick onboard. I will highlight these individuals and others connected to the museum in the coming months. We will now all be communicating regularly via telephone and video conference.
Ernad Sisic of Lawrenceville, Georgia, is the former drum major, tour manager, and corps director of Southwind. He is a music arranger and was formerly Group Administrator at Equinox Percussion, currently attending Troy University. Thanks to his efforts, the new website for the Museum is expected to go online very shortly.
That website will include many charts, graphs, and statistical analyses created by Tom Norton, who has accumulated a vast amount of information documenting the marching activity. Tom, of Titusville, Florida, has been involved with the marching activity and archiving its history for many years. As his research continues, information on pipe bands, drum and bell corps, military bands, and other marching musical organizations will be added to the website and the Museum archives. Tom also categorizes the recording archives including the conversion of audio and video recording from many formats (record albums, audio tape formats, video formats, etc.) into modern digital formats. His research, to date has located and documented drum and bugle corps worldwide, past and present, which includes groups in the US, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Great Britain, and drum corps in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Amazingly, none have been found in Australia to date!
Recent donations to the Museum include a t-shirt, a sample of those worn by the entire Reilly Raiders corps during the 1959 season to honor their drum major “Wild: Bill Hooten, donated by Bill Kaufmann.
Terri Troxell came to the Museum one Monday night from Oakland, New Jersey, accompanied by Tom Beebe (pictured with the Museum’s George Growcott) bearing many interesting items donated from the collection of the late Ray Troxell. Ray was well-known in drum corps and east coast high school band circles. Terri and Tom brought a wide assortment of memorabilia, including a number of record albums, handbills, photos, several plaques and awards Ray had received, and handbills, patches and photos of corps with which he was affiliated. Among Ray’s many contributions to the activity, he also wrote a drum corps column, Interstate News Notes.
Recently mailed to Museum Curator Bill Ives was a package from Andy Mazzarella. The package included his red uniform jacket and trousers from the Polish Falcons (renamed the Falcon Cadets in 1974) of Elizabeth, New Jersey, photos of the corps in competition, a corps patch, a history of the corps, and a 1976 reunion program book. In the early 1970s, this was one of the top-ranked corps in the east, just missing DCI finals in 1974 in Ithaca, New York, placing 13th. Andy also included a blue jacket and shako from the O.L.P.H. Ridgemen, with whom the Falcons merged in 1978 to become the Crimson Buccaneers, but folded a year later.
Also in the mail were items received from Harold Collins. Among these artifacts were a banner from the Buckeye Express, a t-shirt and numerous other items from the Ohio Brass Factory, a patch from the Marion Cadets and one from Pennsylvania’s Schuylkill Haven Belvederes (which later merged with the Hazleton Highlanders to become the Black Diamond Regiment), and numerous ticket stubs, stadium passes, and buttons.
The Museum is grateful for all of the many donations it has received. Donors can be confident that all items received for inclusion in this huge collection will be catalogued and carefully maintained.
The Marching Pageantry Arts Museum is currently located at the historic Archer-Epler VFW Post 979, 6736 Marshall Road, in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia. Bill Ives is President, CEO, and archivist of the museum corporation, an IRS 501(c)(3) charitable corporation. Donations of drum corps, marching band, and color guard memorabilia are always welcome. Cash donations are tax deductible to the extent allowed by law and may be made payable to:
Marching Pageantry Arts Museum
c/o Bill Ives
1024 Second Avenue
Media, PA 19063
The museum is currently open on Monday evenings from 6:00 to 10:00 PM by appointment only. Bill can be reached by e-mail at ivesbill@mac.com or by phone at (610) 937-6555.
The Marching Pageantry Arts Museum – “A story worth telling and worth knowing”