Big Effort by Tiny Town’s Band

For high school bands, a once-in-a-lifetime invitation to march in the Rose Parade touches off an immediate announcement and joyous celebration.

But when Don Rogers, band director at Attica Senior High School, got the word that his musicians could come to Pasadena to march in the 2003 Tournament of Roses, he kept the news to himself for three weeks.

“I had to do some soul-searching,” says Rogers, who let only his wife in on the secret. “I didn’t know if we were on this level.”

Most Rose Parade bands have far more resources than Rogers’. They often come from big high schools in prosperous suburbs, where they are supported by booster clubs with the funds to fly young musicians to national competitions or prestigious parades year after year.

Attica High has just 600 students. It is in a small, rural community in economically depressed western New York state. Its band has always traveled by bus. The town is best known for a prison riot 31 years ago.

Rogers wondered if his musicians could come up with the $1,000 per head it would take to get to the Rose Parade. And even if they could find the money, he wondered, how many band parents would agree, after Sept. 11, to put their children on a plane?

Despite his misgivings, Rogers decided to accept. The Attica band is scheduled to arrive in Los Angeles on Saturday, propelled by, among other things, a cornfield maze and at least two dead steers.

“No one has had a longer road to Pasadena,” says Gary Thomas, the Tournament of Roses president, who visited Attica last spring to encourage the band. “They are a real underdog band.”

Their comeback story begins with the 57-year-old Rogers.

After graduating from a college in upstate New York 37 years ago, he received his best job offer from the Attica school district: elementary school music teacher. He taught in a two-room schoolhouse at first and later spent 11 years as middle school band director, a term interrupted for a three-year Army tour.

When he took over the high school band in 1979, Rogers switched its emphasis from concerts to marching in hopes of doing more traveling. But some of the band’s performances in the 1980s were marked by hecklers who made references to the 1971 prison riot at Attica that killed 32 inmates and 11 prison employees.

“It was difficult to go on the road,” Rogers says. “Our kids became fed up. A lot of the time, they played angry.”

But as time passed and memories faded, the heckling died down and the band grew. It now has 215 of Attica’s current enrollment of 615 (the highest percentage of participation of any high school band in the parade).

In recruiting, Rogers learned to be flexible. He has grown accustomed to losing some of his players -- many of whom are farm kids -- during the harvest.

And, at a small school determined to field sports teams, 85% of his band members play a sport; it’s not unusual for many of the band members, in their athletic uniforms, to take up their instruments right after a game.

It has been over the last five years, Rogers says, that “the band took a couple of steps up.”

In 1998, it earned a spot in Detroit’s Thanksgiving Day parade. A year later, it performed well in a prestigious festival in Virginia, and in 2001 it garnered a place in the Orange Bowl Parade. The bus trip to Florida took 30 hours.

Rose Parade officials noticed the Miami performance and encouraged Rogers to apply.

While most bands submit letters of recommendation from senators and governors, Attica’s came from hotels where the band had stayed and from the Buffalo Bills football team, for which it sometimes plays.

Parade officials were charmed.

Leighton Anderson, a member of the tournament’s music committee, called Rogers in November 2001 and suggested, Why don’t you come out and watch the parade?

Why? asked Rogers.

Because you’re going to be in it next year.

“I never would have imagined I would bring a band to California,” he says now.

Preparation has not been easy.

He has slowed down the band’s cadence to match the speed of the Rose Parade and has told some members to lose weight.

The trip will cost $250,000 -- a huge amount for Attica, but about half what many other bands will spend. Attica’s musicians will save money by limiting the number of tourist attractions they visit to two (many bands visit four) and spending time decorating a float instead.

Still, most of the Attica area’s businesses have pitched in on fund-raising.

Band supporters even created a maze in a six-acre cornfield and charged admission ($5 per person, $15 per family); from the air, the maze looked like a rose that was framed by the words “Attica band.”

“The fund-raising has gone so well,” says Norb Fuest, a longtime band parent, who estimates that the money has cut the per-person cost down to about $700. “Now, some of these kids realize they actually are getting on a plane, and many have never flown before. They are pretty nervous about it.”

Drum major Nicole Kelver, who lives on her family’s dairy farm, went even further. She and her brother Benjamin, a freshman saxophone player, raised two steers specifically to help them for the trip. The animals brought a total of $600 at slaughter.

“The Rose Bowl steers help, and I know we aren’t getting much for Christmas this year,” she says. “This has been hard, but I’m glad Mr. Rogers is taking us. Material things don’t mean much when you have a chance to be in that parade.”