YES, I AM STILL HERE peeking out of the newspaper’s window on Main Street and I didn’t know I was going to kick over the hornet’s nest when I started this majorette thing.
I simply moaned the loss of majorettes from high school bands. Every high school band I know of went from majorettes to flag lines, and there is nothing wrong with flag lines except that they emerged at the same time majorette baton twirlers went away.
I have been corrected in my assertion that the last time fans in the stands saw a Scrapper Band twirler was at the last home game halftime show of 1988. That was wrong. The year was 1998.
I have been hearing from former majorettes and l gotta tell you — they are also disappointed in our loss.
The names I use will mostly be maiden names, as I am unfamiliar with many of these former Scrapper Band majorettes.
Apparently the last three were Megan Steel, Ashley Sweeden and Taniah Strickland. That was in 1998, several people have told me.
My own band years had majorettes Becca Ball, Donna Vaughn, Terry Thompson, Judy Smith, Becky Tisher, Becky Utley, Betty Steel and feature twirler Brenda Echols.
Here are some other majorette names that were forwarded to me:
Maureen Renard, Nikki Elms, Carol Utley, Andrea Lyons, Ashley Waldrop, Kathy Renard, Lauren Kreul. From my own family, Kathy and Jennifer Graves. Plucked from my limited memory, Elizabeth Griffin, sisters Shirley and Gloria Cook, Pat Ray, Linda Foshee, Thomasene Ryan. No guarantee on speeling.
At a class reunion this past weekend, there were a couple of videos that gave us a glimpses of Scrapper Majorettes in other eras. They were always the front rank of the marching band, juuuust barely out of reach of the trombone line and those dangerous slides.
Worthy of mention: The majorettes were usually among the best musicians in the band meaning that they could march — in step — and perform twirling routines at the same time. Then, when sitting in the stands they could actually play instruments. Seems to me they were mostly clarinets, saxophones and flutes.
Lots of times they also had metal ‘taps’ on the heels and toes of their boots, and that made for a distinctive clicking noise when marching down Main Street in a parade. Sometimes they made sparks.
Several of our majorettes went on to twirl for the Razorback Band, and surely some went on to perform at halftime with bands at Henderson, Ouachita, Southern State, and other small colleges in Arkansas.
Help me out. Send more Scrapper Majorette names to:
louie@nashvilleleader.com
If you haven’t seen her yet, NHS junior Sarah Rawlingson has performed with the band at the last two games.
Let me repeat this in case the Flag Line Moms are determined to put out a contract on me: Flag Lines and Majorettes can co-exist. The ‘contract’ is just a rumor at this point and I am hoping to forge peace between them and me. Nevertheless, let’s bring back majorettes.
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IT HURT. Too bad the Razorbacks’ two-point conversion to win the ballgame was unsuccessful. Still very proud of how far this team has come.
Practically the whole football weekend was woeful.
Except Texas and Alabama lost.
There was a time when college football freshmen could not play with the varsity. Many years the ‘junior varsity’ teams from Henderson and Southern Arkansas (it was Southern State, then) would play a mid-week game at Scrapper Stadium. Also seems to me that Henderson won every time.
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SURVIVE. I hope the historic little community of Columbus, shared by Howard and Hempstead counties, can survive the current politically-correct destruction of statues and road signs by folks who are just plain mad that Christopher Columbus ‘discovered’ the New World.
Really. That’s what happening now. A news article points out that Columbia is merely the feminine version of Columbus. And on Monday, Columbus Day across America, protestors were challenging the public respect given to this man.
My opinion is that this an anti-European bias. I am personally glad that he set off into the unknown and ‘found’ this place.
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PLEASE GET the Covid-19 vaccine. Saw on the news where a notorious anti-vaxxer continued his diatribe against getting vaccinated. From his hospital ICU room. Where he was on a ventilator.
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THINGS I LEARNED from opening an email. It’s probably my age that tricks people into thinking I’m an adult.
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WORD GAMES. Triplets: On and On and On. Can’t tell ‘em apart.
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HE SAID: “Heaven wheels above you, displaying to you her eternal glories, and still your eyes are on the ground.” Dante Alighieri, Italian poet and philosopher. Wrote “Divine Comedy.”
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SHE SAID: “Sometimes a neighbor whom we have disliked a lifetime for his arrogance and conceit lets fall a single commonplace remark that shows us another side, another man, really; a man uncertain, and puzzled, and in the dark like ourselves.” Willa Cather, American novelist on the frontier and pioneer experience.
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SWEET DREAMS, Baby
