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Schools

The joy's in the band

For a marching band with a storied history, a recent crescendo in participation signals a resurgence at Hernando High.

By MICHAEL KRUSE
Published November 13, 2005

	[Times photo: Keri Wiginton]
	Hernando High School's former and current flag corps members gather together to perform before the homecoming game on Oct. 21. Members of the Hernando High School Alumni Band joined the band's current members for the performance. The school's band, once more than 200 strong, had shrunk but is growing again.

BROOKSVILLE - Joe Harrin's got a big job. He's the first-year band director at Hernando High School. And the Hernando High School band is no ordinary band.

At least it's not supposed to be.

The marching band has a history here. It was huge. The so-called Royal Regiment in the '70s was 200-some strong, performed halftime acts at football games all over the South and went to the Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington and even Jimmy Carter's inaugural.

By the end of last school year, though, it had withered to fewer than 20 kids.

But now, transitioning from the end of football season to the winter concert season and the annual performance in the Brooksville Christmas parade, the band looks like it's on the way back. The number of members has tripled just this fall. Students say everything is different.

This is what Harrin came here to do: rebuild. He's a Hernando grad, Class of '96, and spent four years as the band director at Central High before opting to return home.

And what he's trying to do ties into the school's overall effort to improve its image and reconnect with the community overall.

"The band is the front porch for a school," assistant principal Mark Griffith said last week. "All the parades and things like that - if you've got a marching band that has a great presence, people stop and look. They're loud; they're marching, all dressed the same. It gets people's attention."

In this community, though, the lack of all that gets attention, too.

"It's been a bit of a rebuilding year," Harrin said last month. "It's a struggle right now to live up to the expectations that the kids have."

Easy to see where those expectations come from.

Under legendary former band director Steve Manuel, who is now the general manager of Brooksville radio station WWJB-AM 1450, the bands in the '70s covered whole football fields.

They did the Cherry Blossom Festival in '73. They were back in the nation's capital in '77 for Carter's inaugural. They went to the Orange Bowl, the Sugar Bowl and the Cotton Bowl.

Locally, the band traveled to Friday night football games in Dade City, Inverness and Crystal River in as many as six buses.

"The entire community revolved around band," said Lara Bradburn, Class of '81 and a band alum. "Band was just the thing to do."

When Manuel started, though, in the 1969-70 school year, he had only 40 kids. It grew. And grew and grew.

"I don't see any reason why that still can't be done," Manuel said last week in his upstairs office at WWJB.

Others do.

"I don't think it's going to be like that again," said Kathy Thompson, who was the Hernando band director for 11 years, until 1996, and is now the band director at Challenger K-8 School of Science and Mathematics. "Just because the community has changed so much."

People have a lot of theories: Kids, some say, now have too much to do - youth group, cross country, jobs to pay for cars, gas and insurance. Standardized tests take away from extracurricular subjects. The county has four high schools now instead of just the one. And on and on.

Whatever the reasons, the band at Hernando had just 17 kids going into this school year, and the last director resigned after administrators found incomplete attendance records, faulty grading practices and unsupervised students - not to mention the constantly sagging participation.

"The program had gone down to nothing," Manuel said. "There is no other way to put it."

But the school provided funds over the summer for a new carpet in the band room and some new paint. Even all the stickers and the gum wads were taken off the wall in the back storage room.

Manuel helped organize an alumni band event to go along with last month's Hernando Homecoming festivities. Almost 100 former band members showed up to play the pregame alma mater.

And Harrin has changed the atmosphere with the current members.

At marching practices on the field behind the high school, he wears khaki pants, carefully tucked golf shirts and a ball cap with some cool Oakley shades. He looks kind of like a football coach - more soft-spoken, sure, but no less demanding.

He had 43 kids at Central in his first year - and 85 by the time he left to come here.

Those 17 kids he had when he arrived at Hernando in June are now 52 kids. Twenty-seven of those 52 are freshmen. Another eight are first-year players.

"Mr. Harrin has kind of cleaned it up a little," senior trumpet player Anthony Romano said after a band class one afternoon last week.

A little?

"You can't even compare," junior mellophone player Alyssa Maternowski said.

Ask these kids what's different this year, and the looks on their faces say: Other than everything?

"The attitude," senior flute player and drum major Melissa Dane said. "The atmosphere is better."

"They're seeing the results of his teaching immediately," said Kathy LaVay, a Hernando alum who's now the band director at Gainesville's Santa Fe High School, winner of five state band championships in the last seven years.

Hernando scored a "2" - excellent - Nov. 5 at the Florida Bandmasters Association competition. A "1" is superior and a "3" is good. The Royal Regiment once went a straight, solid quarter-century getting only superiors.

Harrin's set to graduate a dozen kids this year. He hopes to pick up 25 to 30 from the program at Parrott Middle School. In three years, he says, he can get up to 100 total.

He's done the math.

Now he's doing the recruiting.

"A lot of trips to the middle school," he said.

"It's coming back," said Darlene Blount, Class of '81, a former band member who's had one of her children come through the program and two more in it right now. "People are excited about what's happening with the band."

"The big thing now is: This is where our program can be next semester - where we can be next year - rather than get wrapped up in the struggles of right now," Harrin said. "Because there's a lot of potential in these kids. And the more kids you have, the more people are going to want to be a part of it, and then it becomes the "it' thing."

The way it used to be.

Again.

Michael Kruse can be reached at 352 848-1434 or mkruse@sptimes.com

[Last modified November 13, 2005, 03:00:43]