MARCHING BAND | 1 2 3

For 50 years, the Marching Bearcats have taken the field before a football game by charging down the steps, carrying their instruments. This photo was snapped at homecoming '69 by Beth Rosenberg Kauffman, Ed '72, now a high-school child-development teacher in Maryland.

A strong sense of camaraderie among University of Cincinnati marching band members has probably been a factor in the band's cultivation of several traditions:

• When the Bearcats win a game, band members turn their hats backward after the game to play "Cheer Cincinnati."
  
• Afterward, they straighten their hats respectfully to play the "Alma Mater."
  
• The "hat ripple" occurs after pre-game and half-time performances. Band members stand at attention at their stadium seats until signaled to sit simultaneously, then the drum majors motion for musicians at the end of each row to take off their hats, followed in rapid succession by each member down the line, creating a race between the rows.
  
• For good luck, band members rap each other on the chest with their knuckles before each performance.

Despite all the traditions, much has changed in the band -- most notably, the addition of women after World War II. "1943 was the first year women played in the band," remembers Nancy Van Wye Lodwick, A&S '44. "We didn't have football that year because of the war, so band director Merrill Van Pelt decided to have a concert band instead of a marching band.

"Most of the band members were GIs with the Army Specialized Training Program (enlisted soldiers being trained on campus). Since I had been a majorette who wasn't going to be able to march, Van Pelt asked me to play flute in the band."

More women were admitted the next year, and in '45, the band returned to the football field, women marching side by side with the men for the first time. As numerous veterans returned to campus in '46, however, many of them expected the band to revert to its all male status. The fall season was a trying time, but the band remained coed.

Experiencing pivotal times in the band as the result of a war seems to be a tradition of its own for the Van Wyes. Nancy's father Ralph Van Wye, Eng '24, formed the band in 1920, after playing for two years in one of the famed Army bands that Gen. John J. Pershing created during World War I.

Following his tour of duty, Van Wye entered UC's College of Engineering, where the commanding officer for the Student Army Training Corp (affiliated with the college at the time) quickly recruited the experienced bandsman to direct a new band he wanted to develop. Helping nudge Van Wye's agreement was the fact that the project fulfilled a college requirement.

Engineering dean Herman Schneider, famous for inventing cooperative education, mandated that his students have a daily "hobby hour" for activities unrelated to their majors. "It was to make you a well-rounded person," UC archivist Kevin Grace explains. "Schneider was decades ahead of his time."

The SATC band became Van Wye's hobby hour, as it did for many engineering students. Growth was slow, and the first rehearsal barely attracted eight men. Van Wye often joked that "the only letter we could form was the letter I."

NEXT PAGE | Band moves to CCM