PALMER -- Despite midday temperatures that hovered in the 90s and a humidity level of more than 90 percent, marching in the National Independence Day Parade in Washington, D.C., was an "incredible experience," said Gayle Hoyt, a Colony High School sophomore and member of Colony's marching band.
"It's history in the making. We're the first Alaska band to be in the national parade," Hoyt said.
The 63-member ensemble marched in the event at the invitation of parade organizer Bill Bergeman after Bergeman read an Aug. 20, 2005, article in the Daily News online. The article touted the Colony group's debut performance and its status at that time as Alaska's only marching band. (Nenana City Public School has since formed a marching band of its own.)
Colony band director Jamin Burton said he opened the opportunity this spring to students in the Valley's other high school bands as well as to middle school students who will be going into eighth or ninth grade in the fall.
"This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I wanted to give as many people the chance to go because we'll never be invited again," Burton said.
Besides, he said, marching in the national parade was a great way to build excitement and should help grow his band in the coming years.
His strategy seems to have worked for Abby Jahn, an eighth-grade student at Teeland Middle School.
Jahn plays the alto saxophone in the Teeland band and marched with the Colony group in Washington. Though she's got another year to go, Jahn says she fully intends to join marching band when she enters Colony as a freshman.
"It was a lot of fun," she said, adding that the 1 1/4 -mile march down Constitution Avenue, which lasted nearly three hours, "went a lot faster than I thought it would."
Not everyone agreed.
"The highlight of the parade was most likely the end," Hoyt said. The heat, he said, got the better of several people along the parade route.
Burton said he tried to prepare the students for that by making them march outside this summer along the streets near Colony in their winter coats.
"But every time we did, it rained," he said.
On parade day, he did the next best thing: He loaded them with water.
Each student was required to drink a liter before the parade started, Burton said. And they carried two liters of water in backpacks as they marched. Drinking tubes extended from the backpacks to their mouths so they could get a quick sip when they needed one. When the marchers reached the end, they were given more water or Gatorade.
Still, a handful of students in the Colony group were treated for heat exhaustion after the parade, Burton said.
"No one lost consciousness, but a few were close," he said.
Laura Whitmore, a Palmer High School sophomore and a trombone player who marched with the Colony gang, says the parade and the practices were a lot of work, "but in the end it was really worth it."
In addition to marching in the national parade, the group attended a Stevie Wonder concert and watched the national fireworks display in front of the Capitol. They also visited the Smithsonian Institution and several of the monuments in Washington, then headed to New York City, where they visited a host of landmarks, including Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center and the World Trade Center site. And they took in "The Phantom of the Opera" on Broadway.
"We wanted to squeeze in as many things as we could fit in our days," Burton said. "We were running nonstop."
The band returned to the Valley on July 7, and Burton is planning another big adventure Outside. He says he'd like the band to march in the 2009 Rose Bowl Parade in Pasadena, Calif.
To do that, he said, the band must have 100 members. It peaked at 63 students last year, but a handful of students graduated and a few others aren't returning, Burton said. This fall, he says, he expects to start with around 50 students.
To boost his numbers and better his odds at getting into the Rose Bowl, he said, he'd like to partner with Nenana or any other school that might have a marching band by then and create an all-Alaska band rather than simply a Colony band.
But growing the band is only part of the challenge, Burton said. Marching in parades requires a set of skills separate from those used in halftime shows, and Alaska offers few opportunities to hone those skills.
"They don't really get to see the big picture of what this is all about. But they got to see that whole thing (in the national parade)," he said.
He says he believes that experience served as a confidence booster -- one he hopes will open doors to future opportunities.
"The biggest thing they've learned is they can do it if they trust each other and learn how to work and be dedicated to it," Burton said. "If you do that, all the other skills you can learn."
Daily News reporter Becky Stoppa can be reached at bstoppa@adn.com or 352-6708.
