On the Saturday before the Twin Towers fell in New York City, this squad of mellophone players smiled brightly before the Spartan Marching Band (SMB) took the field for an afternoon football game. Little did any of us, parents or students, know what the shape of the next few days would be or, for that matter, what the shape of the next decade would become.
Peter Eichler (my youngest son), Kristen Karas, Steve (what is Steve's last name?), and Candy Haldeman were four of the 300 plus band members who performed for the Michigan State versus Central Michigan game that day. Their smiles reflect the optimism that was taken from all of us in those terrible moments of September 2001. In its place now? A realism born of facing terror bravely as a country that knows how to be cautiously optimistic and reverently proud.
According to Peter who is on colorguard staff with SMB this year, the band will play an arrangement of Amazing Grace this afternoon in Spartan Stadium that was first played at the Notre Dame game in 2001, the first game post 9/11. Their half time show is called "A Salute to America -- in Remembrance of 9/11." It will be a patriotic remembrance of the attacks and a memorial to all who died in New York, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania on that fateful September day in 2001.
Photo by Wanda Hayes Eichler
Taken on Saturday, September 8, 2001
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