The Sanford High School Band will represent Maine during this year’s Inaugural Parade, but a dozen years ago there were two Bangor-area schools in Washington for President Bill Clinton’s second inauguration.
Old Town High School’s marching band, directed by Jeff Priest, was one of 123 marching units in the 1997 parade that proceeded up Pennsylvania Avenue on the afternoon of Jan. 20. The group played the “State of Maine Song” as the Sanford band will this year.
Also in 1997, musicians from John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor, having played for Clinton during a pre-election rally at Bangor International Airport, played in a tent on the Mall during Inauguration Week and performed in the grand foyer at the Kennedy Center. The Bapst choral group sang at the Old Post Office Pavilion.
Participating in the parade meant that the Old Town youth wouldn’t actually see the Jan. 20 inauguration. Instead, they listened to it by radio in three buses at the staging area for the parade, the mammoth Pentagon parking lot.
Each unit was assigned a military official, and a U.S. Marine told the students he would be with them until the end of the day. As the president took the oath of office, the youngsters were receiving their share of the more than 8,000 bag lunches distributed to parade participants.
At 1:20 p.m., the band left for the Mall in Washington, their buses passing blocked-off highways and throngs of people walking toward the parade route in winter coats and scarves. The buses emptied the musicians near the Capitol, then parked a few streets over from the White House until their charges returned.
The musicians passed through metal detectors and then waited. The parade was delayed more than an hour and a half until the inaugural luncheon was finished.
Marching toward the end of the parade, the Old Town Band found a thinner crowd as the sun dipped and the early evening turned chilly. But the musicians kept a firm formation, lines straight, drumbeats in sync.
Among those cheering them on were musicians from John Bapst, who had played the day before at Harmony Hall, a giant tent on the Mall in Washington.
There, director Julie Ewing’s John Bapst Crusaders played for listeners including then-Congressman John Baldacci and TV actress Liz Torres.
Bapst musicians offered “The Maine Stein Song,” the National Anthem, “Camino Real” and “Secret Agent Man” — a tribute to the Secret Service.
In a performance at the Kennedy Center, a sprightly older woman danced during pieces played by the John Bapst Stage Band, then stayed around to meet director Al McIntyre and give him a hug.
During “Maine Line Shuffle,” the band was joined by saxophonist Sgt. Kevin Tillman, who had made the trip to Washington with the band.
Tillman had begun his relationship with Bapst during the first troop landing at BIA in 1991, when his performance of the National Anthem on a sax he borrowed from a student was broadcast around the country.
Tillman led warm-ups with the musicians on the trip, taking every opportunity to remind the youngsters what a privilege it was to be a part of the president’s big week.
Also joining the band at the Kennedy Center was Bapst alumnus Joey Shyka, then a college student in Texas.
“Your first gig at the Kennedy Center?” he asked Julie Ewing after the students finished. “Mine, too.”
Roxanne Moore Saucier traveled to Washington in 1997 with the Old Town and John Bapst bands, writing about their activities for the Bangor Daily News.
