Norwich bulletin., 1912-02-28

The Norwich Drum and BusIe Corps.

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Mr.. Editor: The Bulletins notice of
the death of William Nelson, which
has just come to the attention of some
Of us to whom he taught how to use
drumsticks, who now live in water
bury, contains inaccuracies-but that
is not so strange when one remembers
that 1t is twenty-five years and more
since those drum corps flourished in
Norwich His death recalls the flying
sof time and many pleasant memories,
though his old pupils are not yet very
aged,
There never was a Norwich Silver
Drum and Bugle Corps" It's official
title was that with Silver" left out
and it came to be known as the silver
drum corps because the drums had
nickel shells. Bank Commissioner
Lippitt is the only member of it who
comes to mind at this moment.
But that wasn't the corps of young
sters to which you evidently refer In
the obituary; it came before, and the
Juvenile drum corps which wore a
short pants uniform, and was actually
named by The Bulletin, followed 1t.
This started as a drumming class and
on the first Memorial day on which II
escorted the Sons of Veterans 1t had
Bulletin referred to it as the Juvenile
drum corps, and the name stuck.
| was but nine years old when it
was organized, and the other boys
must have averaged about that We
never turned out, to my remembrance,
with anything but drums, though we
did practice some with a file of piccolo
players. We did, however, have lot
of fancy snare drum work which could
be turned loose on occasion.
The Juvenile drum corps never es-
corted the Grand Army veterans in
| Norwich-at least, on Memorial day;
we did turn out with the republican
veterans in a big parade when James
| G. Blaine came to Norwich in 1888.
We went to a Fourth Of July celebra-
ton at Henry c. Bowen's Roseland
park in Woodstock with Sedgwick
post, once, too.
Escorting the veterans on Memorial
day was, however, left for Tubs band
and it used to be the pleasure Of the
! Juvenile drum corps to make things
| interesting for the band. When we
practised in the little old Grand Army
hall on Franklin square, old William
would get one or two of his drummer
| friends to come in and he and they
would play a double drag while
we boys played one of our beats-with
| the result that we could carry our
time perfectly and complete the beat
| when In such an inferno of sound we
| couldn't hear our own drums.
When we would come out on Me-
mortal day, Colonel Tubbs would al
ways arrange with our leader to give
| US plenty of chance to play and not
| commence a band piece while we were
MI Ii hod
very far he would come to a place
| where he wanted it to be playing, and
| if we were playing he would forget al
about his agreement or ignore it ano
start playing OF course, this took al
| the attention Of the crowd, but il
was the easiest thing in the world fol
us to get even. There were three OF
| four long countermarches on the route
| two on East Main street, for in
stance-and as Tubbs' band approach
| ed us on one of these we would star
some rafting beat which would break
| the bands work into small pieces
How Colonel Tubbs would scold!
There is before me now small pho
tograph of the original twelve in thai
| Juvenile drum corps. One or two are
dead and the others are scattered al
over Christendom. Some of them
| haven't known anything about fol
years One other OF the three former
members Of the drum corps who nov
| live in Waterbury is not in the pic
ture, for he John H. Cassidy JOINED
later on, but ]. Rawson Hughes il
| there.
The front rank is composed of Wal
ter Camp, myself, Bbenezer Learned
| Frank Royce, Clarence Butterfield
Herbert George and Renno Blackstone
and the rear rank Of Sherman Bish
! op, Adelbert Clarke, Will Young, Phi
| Huntington, John Hughes and Ruther
ford Plaut Allie Beckwith took tn
, picture. Very sincerely,
| ]. OLIN HOWE.
Waterbury, Feb. %, 1912.