Garfield Cadets perform at the Statue of Liberty

An incredible and mysterious day in New York (1986)

Performing for President Reagan and other world leaders at the Statue of Liberty Centennial Celebration was one of the most incredible days of my drum corps career. Scratch that — of my life!

Security was tight on the island, complete with scuba diver sentries, snipers and carefully hidden missile batteries.

After we got off the boat, Secret Service agents carefully checked every one of our musical instruments for hidden explosives, weapons, or woodwinds. They questioned George Hopkins for three hours about his intentions with the Crossmen and Bb horns.

But once the Garfield Cadets was on the island, we were on the island!

And the door was locked behind us, so to speak. Unless you had some sort of top secret pass to get on Marine One, there was literally no way to get off the island until everything was over and President Reagan was on his way back to the White House.

Here’s a photo of us hanging out with the French delegation, next to Marine One.

Here’s two shots from the concert. Truth be told, the Secret Service cut our performance short by one song for reasons related to national security, but our show was solid and the French delegation cheered wildly for us.

Immediately after our performance, we got out of uniform, we allegedly grabbed wine coolers from one of the free bars all over the island (shhhhhhh), and then went into the reviewing stands. And to our great astonishment, no one stopped us.

In fact, no one even noticed us, most likely because:

(A) the Garfield Cadets and all of our musical instruments had already gone through ten different levels of security;

(B) none of us had tried to board Marine One and fly it around the island when we had the chance — although it was a brief topic of discussion among the bass drummers;

(C) we had already performed for President Reagan without incident; and

(D) we had apparently concluded a treaty with the French, who were now following us around with their tricolor national flag.

So anyway, we got to spend an afternoon sitting in the stands among the presidents and prime ministers of the world, sipping wine coolers with the French and watching the parade of the tall ships. It was an awesome, amazing day, and a true once-in-a-lifetime international experience.

When all was said and done, we made magazines!

And then …. the Garfield Cadets became foreign postage!

This is not some wacky Photoshop trick. Point of fact, the 1986 Garfield Cadets are one of the only drum corps in the history of the planet to become actual postage in a foreign country. If not the only one.

Which I suspect France may have had something to do with.

In any case, thank you to George Hopkins and everyone else in the Cadets organization who made this once-in-a-lifetime experience possible.

And thank you for reading Drum Corps Scene 7 on Substack.

No offense to anyone with the humor contained in these features.

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