MORGANTOWN — It’s what you do when you’re in the band.
Cearah Harvey hit her marks and didn’t miss a cue.
She spun and pivoted.
Not once did that flag graze the pavement.
Muscle memory and musical instinct, it was.
The assemblage parked its cadence on that specially painted section of Manhattan asphalt to play, “Strike up the Band.”
Herald Square.
The Macy building, with Tom Turkey over its entrance and the “Believe” lettering draped midway down.
All those people, watching in person.
All those people, watching at home.
Awareness came calling, like a cymbal crash.
“Whoa,” she said through her smile. “New York City.”
Earning passage
Cearah (sounds like, “Sierra”), is a senior at University High School.
She started out a band kid at Mountaineer Middle as a flautist. She still plays flute in the UHS concert band, in fact.
It was the precision of the color guard, with its marching and precise choreography, that caught her muse.
Because her high school years were riddled by work stoppages and COVID, she never got a band trip. The Hawk band was lucky if it got a field show at halftime, even.
Cearah decided to audition for her own luck.
She posted a routine to YouTube and long after, she was notified that a spot was awaiting in Macy’s Great American Marching Band, if she wanted it.
Macy’s Great American Marching Band is the house band, of sorts, for the landmark Thanksgiving Day Parade, also hosted by the iconic retailer.
There are only 185 slots open for the band, which takes the top martial musicians from high schools across the nation. It is led by Richard Good, a nationally known music educator from Auburn University.
The student from Morgantown was one of just three West Virginians earning a spot this year.
Keeping it surrealistic in the city
Once there, the musicians undertook a series of brisk rehearsals in nearby Teaneck, N.J., she said.
There were shopping trips — Macy’s — a Broadway performance of “Wicked,” and all those restaurants and all that sightseeing.
The latter was interesting for Cearah. It was her first trip to the city, but like most TV watchers and moviegoers, she still knew it. It was culturally jarring, sometimes, seeing the icons in person.
“Yeah, that was surrealistic,” the future high school English teacher said.
South Dakota refrigerator
Psychologists and other professional watchers of the human condition say time-honored events such as the Macy’s parade are now even more important, in a country unsettled by COVID and civic strife.
From its first edition in 1924, the parade has survived the Great Depression, World War II and Sept. 11.
It reinvents itself with the times. Baby Yoda was one of the parade’s signature, giant balloons making a debut this year, along with Snoopy and the other traditional favorites.
On Nov. 25, 2021, Cearah got to add her footprints on its nearly three-mile route from Central Park West to 34th Street in Manhattan, right in front of Macy’s — where she said, “Whoa, New York City.”
“I’ll never forget it,” she said.
Her best friend from the experience is Raeya Allen, a fellow color guard member from South Dakota.
Together, they posed for a photograph that made Raeya’s hometown paper.
Which means the snap, in another time-honored tradition, is now likely adorning the refrigerator door in the kitchen of her grandma’s house in Sioux Falls.
Is that surrealistic, too?
“No,” Cearah said, laughing. “That’s special.”
TWEET @DominionPostWV
