Grab a flag and wave it

By ANN R. HARNEY 
Staff Writer 

“Coming Home to Freedom” is a fitting theme for this year’s Great American Brass Band Festival at Centre College. 

In the past year, men and women from here at home and all across the country have been sent to Iraq and Kuwait, and their families and friends are hoping they will be coming home soon — home to freedom. 

Patriotism could be at its height when the festival parade starts on Main Street because Saturday is Flag Day. At the conclusion of this day, fireworks will light up the sky after the final performance at Centre College.

During the morning parade, local members of the American Legion and VFW auxiliaries will be handing out flags. 

Nancy Reed says she and Frances Adams will be visible along Main Street before and during the parade. Reed says she hopes to find a prominent place to sit with a large box of flags. She says she has trouble walking and Adams will be more mobile, handing out the small flags up and down the street. 

Asked if the veterans’ groups are encouraging people to hang flags at their homes, Reed replies, “Of course, it’s Flag Day.’’ 

Reed says hundreds of flags will be distributed and she won’t be hard to find in her red, white and blue vest. Adams decorated a hat with poppies and she, too, will be wearing red, white and blue. Four of the bands slated to perform for the 2003 festival are attached to units of this country’s military, and Flag Day is special for the members. 

They include the Hellcats, which provides music for the West Point’s Corps of Cadets; the 202nd Army National Guard Band in Frankfort; the 257th Army Band, billed as the Band of the Nation’s Capital; and the United States Coast Guard Band, the premier band for that division of the military. 

The Washington band is made up of players from the District of Columbia National Guard. None of its members, nor the Coast Guard band members, have been shipped out to Iraq. 

“As a unit, we all go together or we don’t go at all,’’ says Staff Sgt. Brian Jones, who is a full-time music teacher at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. The band is a part-time job, he says, although they rehearse frequently.

Jones was a member of the Air Force Band, and after he left the Air Force, he missed the music and the camaraderie and order of a military band. So he joined the National Guard band. The band has representatives from all of the premium military bands, Jones says. 

While none of the 35 band members has been sent overseas this time, the band has participated in send-offs for National Guardsmen. “We were called to send these people off to war,’’ he says. The ceremony was, in a way, giving them their last orders here, as well as an effort to unite the members into a cohesive group. 

“I’d never been involved in something like this,’’ Jones says. “Their families are there. It’s very poignant to watch them leave family and create a new family.’’ 

He hopes to be on hand when they return. Jones likes to play around the country. He says the Air Force Band played in Carnegie Hall when he was a member. “Nobody came,’’ he said. “It’s amazing when we march in a parade. The people who attend the marches are special people. They’re all fired up and it’s not just the music. When I put on that green uniform, I become the face of the Army; it’s the Army coming to you.’’ 

Mark Weaver of the Coast Guard band says the group always puts on a patriotic performance, but this year is special. 

“It will be particularly patriotic because of the Coast Guard people who have been deployed.’’ 

He says about 1,600 guardsmen are performing roles such as port security in Iraq and Kuwait. 

“It’s our job to get out there and make people feel good about being Americans,’’ Weaver says. 

The band, which is stationed in New London, Conn., the home of the Coast Guard Academy, makes an annual tour of the nation. This year is special for the top Coast Guard band. Besides the men and women who have gone overseas, the Coast Guard now is part of the Homeland Security department. 

And if all of that were not enough for the band, the Coast Guard is celebrating its part in the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers’ first mechanized flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C. It was guardsmen stationed at a rescue station that were recruited by Orville and Wilbur Wright to serve as a ground crew. 

The familiar picture showing Wilbur watching as Orville took off was taken by a guardsman, Weaver says. The first trans-Atlantic flight was made by a Coast Guard crew in 1919. It differed from the later flight by Charles Lindbergh in that it made stops going across the Atlantic and it was a crew rather than a solo flyer. 

The Coast Guard band’s performance this year includes flight-related music, but Weaver says there is a special piece near the end of the concert and it coincides with the freedom theme. It is called “Liberty for All” and includes portions of famous American speeches. 

“It’s an exciting piece,’’ Weaver says. “The audience members will be on their feet.’’