http://www.palcadets.org/NewsRelease.htm Alumni of Bridgeport Drum Corps Rivals Unite for Festival Parade
More than 150 alumni of rival Bridgeport junior drum & bugle corps have united to perform in the 2004 Barnum Festival after 35 years in retirement. Alumni of the Bridgeport’s PAL Cadets and St. Raphael’s Golden Buccaneers junior drum & bugle corps have organized and are rehearsing their old music in Bridgeport using borrowed drums and bugles. The combined alumni corps, named The Park City Pride, has been invited to perform in two music and marching events of the 2004 Barnum Festival.
As teenagers thirty-five years ago, these men and women were members of fiercely competitive cross-town rivals corps. Now in their fifties and sixties, former members of The Buccaneers and PAL Cadets, along with members of other areas corps from Trumbull, Fairfield and Milford, have united for this unique reunion event as The Park City Pride. The massive corps will lead the Mayor’s Division of the 2004 Barnum Festival Parade June 26th in Bridgeport. The group will also perform an exhibition concert at the Barnum Festival Champions on Parade senior drum & bugle corps contest at Kennedy stadium later that evening.
The Bridgeport area was the home of several highly competitive and popular junior drum & bugle corps between 1957 and 1973. These corps included the PAL Cadets, St. Raphael’s Golden Buccaneers, Loyalaires, Marionettes and Scarlet Knights, all from Bridgeport; the Royal Lancers, and ND-ettes from Fairfield; the Trumbull Troubadors, and Milford Shoreliners. Drum corps was a popular and unique regional and national youth activity in the 50s and 60s for young people age 8 – 21. Thousands of young people passed through the ranks of these highly competitive Bridgeport area junior corps traveling to all parts of the USA in competition and as far as Miami and Chicago. Bridgeport was home to many important junior and senior drum corps events in that era including the Champions on Parade and the World Open Championships conducted for many years at Hedges stadium and later at Kennedy stadium. But by 1975 all the great Bridgeport junior corps had disbanded. Financial pressures, the aging-out of key members, the loss of members to area senior corps and the loss of key adult leadership led to their decline.
Members of the PAL Cadet Alumni Association for this one-time event organized the Park City Pride in January 2004. The corps organizers borrowed bugles, drums and other equipment from corps all over the USA. This unique reunion effort is financed solely by private donations and by fees paid by corps members to cover the cost of uniforms and insurance. Rehearsals are conducted at the PAL Christmas Village, Quarry Road, in Bridgeport one Sunday per month this winter and spring. Members are learning and polishing music they haven’t played in more than 35 years. They will feature a horn line of more than 60 bugles, a drum line of 35 and a color guard of 35. Five past corps drum majors, including Charles “Skippy” Gallant of the Buccaneers and Charles Tichy of the PAL Cadets respectively have signed on to lead the group. Music was selected from the repertoire of both The Buccaneers and PAL Cadets including the Buccaneer’s “A Taste of Honey,” and “How The West Was Won.” PAL selections will include “Semper Paratus” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone” Monsignor Louis A. DeProfio who founded The Buccaneers in 1957 will also participate along with corps management, instructors and other elders. The average age of the participants is 58. A corps float with chair seating will facilitate elderly and disabled corps members in joining the parade. The original uniform of each of the participating corps will be modeled by teens recruited from the present-day PAL organization.
