Day 6: The Last Band Camp for Seniors Is an Emotional One

Day 6:

We finally made it to the last full day of rehearsals, and things went really well. This morning I actually heard Reveille – I forgot to turn the fan on high – so Kieran and I woke up but promptly fell back asleep. A trumpet played this morning and it was really good. I forgot to ask who it was though!

This morning’s rehearsal block was dedicated to cleaning drill. There was no playing, just marching to spots and trying to make forms look better. It can feel like a really slow process, but it is very important to get right. The clouds were out and the air was relatively cool, so that gave us a focused and productive rehearsal. The kids even agreed to go 10 minutes into their lunch since the rehearsal was going so well. Of course that meant we got to lunch late so the dining hall was very loud and crowded by the time we got there. It wasn’t that big of a deal, just slightly annoying.

The afternoon was dedicated to music and guard work, like many of the other days. Mom, Kieran, and I had a nice long nap after my sectional, so I can’t really say what all got done. Dinner was lasagna, and that’s actually pretty good. Most of the kids won’t actually go to the dining hall after breakfast tomorrow, since they can go out to eat with their families after the performance in the morning. We’ll be having a cookout on Lake Michigan for dinner tomorrow.

Tonight was our last big rehearsal at camp with the entire band – music, marching, and guard work. This is also usually the rehearsal where many families come to watch. There were quite a few families there that don’t even have kids in the program anymore. It’s a testament to what we do here and how much it still means to these people.

Roger Smith, assistant principal at Ferndale High School, comes up every year on this night. He spent somewhere close to 20 years as the band director, and was still the band director when I started 10 years ago. Every year he sits on the scaffolding for the last hour and watches for the first time. It’s become a tradition, at least to me, for him to give a speech to the kids after their final run of the show. The kids that are seniors now are the last kids he started in 4^th grade. Still, everybody knows who he is, and it means so much to the kids (and to us) to see him and hear from him every year.

The big star of Saturday night is the senior march. This is probably the biggest camp tradition we have here at camp. The seniors gather after rehearsal on the field while all of the families and students line the road leading to our shed. They review “Eyes with Pride” and get in formation. When the snare tap is heard coming around the corner, the large crowd is absolutely silent. You can’t see them yet since it’s dark, but you hear them coming. The drum line starts the “Full Swing” cadence and the seniors start the motions that go with this. As they approach, you can see tears already from the kids. It’s such a chilling moment as these kids realize that this will be their last band camp, and their last season in marching band. After the cadence, the parade continues with the seniors playing the fight song and doing the guard work along with that. Then the senior drum major calls out the lines to “Eyes with Pride” and the other seniors shout out the responses full of pride and tears. At the end, Elon announces the class (the class of 2012, in this case) and dismisses the group. Then about 30 minutes of hugging and crying ensues by everybody.

What I always notice about this tradition is that the youngest members of the band are more affected by this. For them, this is the first time they are experiencing an activity that can mean so much to so many people that the older students they’ve been looking up to all week lose their composure. Those young students have also been through one of the hardest weeks of work they have ever endured, so emotions show so easily.

The talent show always comes on Saturday. We were lucky to have it in the brand new pavilion (more like an amphitheater) across the road from the field. This ran a bit late, so the kids didn’t get in their cabins until about midnight. Elon and Ben are making the rounds now to try to get everybody settled into their cabins. We have a big performance tomorrow!