Sandord Band’s Day in the Sun is its Most Demanding Performance Ever
SANFORD
Bangor Daily News
Drew FitzGerald
Boston University Washington News Service
Jan. 20, 2009
WASHINGTON — Sanford High School band director Matt Doiron took a picture of the thermometer outside the Wilbur Shaw hardware store in Sanford to show out-of-staters how good they had it: minus 2 degrees when his band left for the national capital on Saturday.
Tuesday afternoon turned out to be the band’s day in the sun, as students just old enough to earn their drivers’ licenses marched behind the nation’s top college and military bands for Barack Obama’s inaugural parade.
“I’m not sure anything prepares you for that first left turn onto Pennsylvania Avenue,” Doiron said. “Between goose bumps and a few of them choking back tears… they will think of their lives differently forever.”
Even without Washington’s very cold weather, Doiron said Tuesday’s parade was the band’s most demanding performance ever, and not just for the mile and a half march down Pennsylvania Avenue. After a 10-hour bus ride to a Washington suburb in Maryland on Saturday, the band assembled at 5 a.m. Tuesday near the Pentagon to be screened, along with their instruments, through a security checkpoint.
Though the band has performed at parades and football games in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and Nova Scotia, Doiron said his students were used to having much more time to prepare.
“The last time we did a major parade, we had about five and a half months,” he said.
“Even that’s pretty hurried.”
Tuesday marked the end of a brief but hectic month for the celebrated band. Doiron said students struggled to prepare for the inauguration after learning they were selected over other Maine applicants on Dec 5.
Most of Doiron’s students had left class at about 2:30 that Friday afternoon when an aide at Sen. Susan Collins’ office told Doiron there was a call for him.
“There was a little pause, and they said ‘Mr. Doiron, Sen. Collins is on the phone for you,” the Sanford native remembered. “She asked if we had heard anything yet, and I said, ‘No.’ She said, ‘Great. I was hoping to be the first to tell you.’ ”
The band was scheduled to play for the annual Holly Days Parade that very evening, and within two hours of the senator’s call, someone had already made a banner boasting of the band’s accomplishment: “D.C. or bust”
Sanford junior Polly McAdam, 16, said it took a while for the moment to sink in. People were celebrating all weekend in Washington, where the sidewalks are often wider than many Sanford streets.
“It was kind of like a big party,” she said. “Everyone was selling T-shirts and in a good mood.”
McAdam said she started playing French horn in fourth grade, but her older brother, a trumpet player, has already graduated from Sanford.
“My brother’s jealous of course, but my parents are really excited,” she said. “They wanted me to call them all the time.”
Drum major Matthew Prive, 18, said the band, by marching in the inaugural parade, was representing more than Sanford High.
“We’re representing the state, our school and all of New England,” he said.
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