It only seems right. The Edison High School Alumni Band marched in the prestigious Edison Festival of Lights Parade in Fort Myers, Fla., on Feb. 17.
About 45 band members made the trek south to participate in the largest nighttime parade in the southeast United States.
“We had a lot of energy, we stood out,” said Mike Iacarella, the organizer of the outing. “There were people ten and 15 deep along the whole route, maybe a hundred thousand people. They were surprised we were from Minnesota.”
The band won the parade’s annual award, in the shape of a light bulb, for coming from the furthest distance.
Thomas Alva Edison made his winter home in Fort Myers, and the city honored him after his death with an annual parade in 1938, now called the Grand Parade of Light.
Ian Mann, the director of bands for the parade, said this wasn’t the first Edison high school band to play in the parade. The most recent one was from Edison High School in Milan, Ohio. But it was the first Edison alumni band to march in Fort Myers.
“We were happy to be asked,” said Iacarella. “After all, Minneapolis Edison was the first school to be named after Thomas Edison and the only one named after him in his lifetime.”
The band made contact with the festival last year, and in July was asked to march in the two-hour parade. In past years, the alumni band has marched in the Mardi Gras in New Orleans and the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Chicago.
The participants paid their own way there, but some housing and some meals were furnished through several fundraisers. While there, the band played a sunset concert at Bonita Beach and had a private tour of the Edison estate in Fort Myers.
Iacarella said an effort was made to contact the 192 Edison alumni who live in Florida to invite them to the parade, and some came.
Jeff Bednark, one of the original organizers of the Alumni Band back in 1977, said the band’s previous trips to New Orleans and Chicago helped prepare them for this outing. He was in charge of the truck and trailer and other logistics.
Bednark said sometimes the work the band demands is draining, “But when the drummers start drumming, it’s time to blow the dust off the trumpet and start marching.”
He said he recently had a cortisone shot. “That way I can march in a straight line instead of a circle.”
Iacarella said that despite the band’s average age of 62, it went well. “We didn’t have too many injuries.”
For the nighttime parade, the band was lit up. “We got hats for the band and they had gold or blue lights on them. Plus we had light strands across our uniforms. Some had lighted shoe laces and some drummers had lighted drum sticks,” Iacarella said.
“And we were told we had to light up our equipment trailer and our snare drummer Ron Herrmann did an incredible job. It was like a float, a work of art.”
Dan Kuch is the band’s drum major, and it’s his job to make sure everybody knows the music and the steps. “We have a fairly complex turn at the corners, and that takes a lot of rehearsals.”
“I don’t know any other high school that has an alumni band like this, with people who just enjoy playing together,” Kuch said. “It’s a good band, and we hang together.”
The Alumni Band usually plays about ten times a year at reunions and parades. At its peak, the band had upwards of 150 members, and at the recent Centennial activities at the school, the band had 100 musicians playing.
The three songs the band performed were the “Blue Gold” Edison rouser, the “Basin Street Blues” and “Land of a Thousand Dances.”
The band is unique in that it is one of few remaining marching bands that still does the “Big Ten High Step,” with legs pumping.
“We represent the spirit of Thomas Edison,” Iacarella said. “We love to do it, and we hope the marching and music will stir up your blood.”