By Edward A. Dalton
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, February 28, 2008

Washington was once synonymous with "Washington drum and bugle corps."

The various corps were defined by interested young inner-city musicians, band members or aspiring drummers, buglers and flag bearers. What distinguished us from other cities was the diverse areas of the city that drum corps members came from. They eventually congregated into the 11 drum and bugle corps that were in the Washington area between 1960 and 1975. We came together with our varying talents and desires for the same purpose: to don our favorite drum corps uniforms and show off our ability to sound good, look good and perform before crowds of our fans.

I was one of those aspiring young musicians who trained (learned to read music) in the D.C. public school system. I went to Terrell Junior High School in Northwest and Anacostia High School in Southeast. I can remember how the city was bustling with school band competitions during the school year and drum corps competitions during the summer, with months and months of evening rehearsals and practices in preparation for the summer competitions. These activities didn't leave much time for trouble.

My choice of colors was with one of the best drum and bugle corps to come out of the mid-Atlantic area: The OLPH (Our Lady of Perpetual Help) VIPs of Washington, D.C. The six years that the corps was in existence were the best, most memorable times of my young life. The places all over America we went, the competitive level we were competing at and the atmosphere all created a learning experience for a black youth from the streets of D.C. My mother never worried because she always knew my whereabouts and always wanted me to share those experiences with my siblings and her at dinner-table discussions.

With our choice of colors, we were a gang of youths who had neighborhood rivalries with horns, drums and flagpoles, not guns, knives or bricks. There was a healthy competitive neighborhood rivalry among those youths. Sure, you wouldn't walk into a rival neighborhood with another uniform color boasting and bragging about who the best drum corps in the city was -- that could be a bad scene. But all in all, there wasn't a lot of that. We kept our competition to fan opinion and our own system of bragging and keeping score, until field competitions would bear out who the best was for that time.

Those hustling, bustling organizations are gone. The current like-minded and talented kids in Washington no longer have the corps to serve their needs all year long.

Those of us lucky enough to be grandparents know that there is a chance to see a comeback of this healthy cultural building block of community development for our most precious commodities: our children and grandchildren.

My fellow VIP members and other corps members are a living testimonial to the fact that the corps works for inner city and suburban youth. All we have to remember is where we came from and the time we came up in. It was a time of turmoil -- the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the 1968 race riots in D.C., the Vietnam war, Kent State, Woodstock . . .

Remember?

When I think back on those times, no one from this generation can tell us about tough times in our neighborhoods. But we are now productive citizens trying to give back those values-building tools to our children.

I and others who remain either active fans or participants in the drum corps world are looking at other cities around the country and wondering what ingredients make up the success of the West Coast and Midwest Drum Corps International drum and bugle corps organizations: the Blue Devils of California, the Santa Clara Vanguard, the Cadets, the Cavaliers, to name a few. They all have outstanding organizations built on a solid foundation of volunteers, parents, local businesses, community, civic groups, politicians and the youth involved.

Come on, Washington! Isn't it time to put D.C. back in the running again? Doesn't the way we take care of the young and old reflect on the way we care about our values, productivity and progress? We hear about youth street violence daily. What things are we saying when we feel that jails and death are the effect, and youth and crime are the cause?

Our local politicians, community businesses, parents and our youth should all feel some responsibility toward the welfare of the community. What goes in or out of the community is everyone's responsibility. Let's help our children with something we know works.

Edward A. Dalton joined Our Lady of Perpetual Help's VIP drum and bugle corps in 1967. The VIPs came from D.C. public schools and trained with dedicated music instructors.