MORGANTOWN — It’s all how you shoulder it, Keith Reed said Sunday afternoon, at Morgantown High School.
Reed is the director of Morgantown High’s Red and Blue Marching Band.
Over the years, the band of his high school alma mater shouldered its musicianship, maturity and work ethic to play and march from Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, in New York City.
The Rose Bowl, too.
Despite such marquee appearances, though, the Red and Blue still must make the green to pay its ways.
And that comes from the boots-on-the-ground work of fundraising.
On Sunday at MHS, there were no boots on the ground. Instead, people came out to contribute to the band’s cause in hopes of marching away with a bag slung over a shoulder.
The band and its boosters hosted a Vera Bradley Bingo, in part to help fund a trip to the prestigious Virginia Arts Festival competition, in Norfork, Va., April 26-29.
“This’ll be good,” he said. “We have good kids. They work hard.”
The parents of those kids work just as hard.
Stacie Rendelman knows the name of that tune. Her son, a sophomore, is on the drum line.
She helped drum up sponsors for Sunday — “Everybody was great,” she said — and the band’s coming trip to Virginia is making her pulse pound, well, just like the MHS drumline.
Two years ago, she went to Hawaii with the band for the performance at Pearl Harbor.
It was the 75th anniversary of the attack that drummed America into World War II.
The band from the school on Wilson Avenue was flawless, she said.
“I had tears streaming,” she said. “It was that special.”
And perennial.
She has another kid at South Middle School, which is also known for its band. Kid No. 2 is in the band there and will most likely, she muses, be in the Morgantown High Band, as well.
“I’m probably gonna be around for a while,” she said. “Once you’re a band parent, you’re a band parent.”
Follow The Dominion Post on Twitter@DominionPostWV. Email Jim Bissett: jbissett@dominionpost.com.
