Warm weather defrosts Marching Band

As spring brings warmer weather, it also brings parade season, which is vital for students in the Marching Band. With parade season, the Marching Band gets their music out to as many people as possible, thus inspiring more students to join. Marching Band students have three parades every year: the King Frost parade, the Memorial Day parade, and the Children’s Day parade. Sheila Kern, a sophomore at Hamburg, says “Hamburg’s Marching Band is my favorite part of the parade.”
With the King Frost parade typically on the last Saturday in October, the Marching Band students get to dress up in Halloween costumes and walk around the main town of Hamburg, playing music while providing candy for all the people watching. After the Marching Band performs their music and walks around the path once, then the students can go to their families and watch the rest of the parade, since the Marching Band is typically one of the first five floats.
When it comes to the Memorial Day parade, the weather decides if it is truly a parade or a performance. If it is not raining on Memorial Day, students play all the patriotic tunes while walking around town, also playing the Star Spangled Banner at each cemetery or memorial site. They then walk to St. John’s Cemetery for the ceremony before heading home. If it is raining, though, these students perform their patriotic tunes in the Hamburg Armory in the ceremony. These students in the Marching Band sacrifice their day off of school to perform music as a tribute to those lost fighting for our country.
For the Children’s Day parade on the first Saturday in June, students perform music before the festival in Shoey, playing recognizable songs for people and kids of all ages. Typically, this parade is after the last week of school, so it is one last chance for all the Marching Band students getting together before summer. The seniors of previous years who performed in this parade typically said “the Children’s Day parade is the last day of Senior year.”