UNIVERSITY PARK — The year was 1963 and then Blue Band Director James Dunlop decided to start a new tradition, have alumni from the Blue Band return to Dear Old State and play their instruments once again during homecoming. And so, the Alumni Blue Band was born!
Dunlop became director of the Blue Band in 1948 and kept in touch with many of his ex-students. On a whim, he decided to send a letter to all the ex-band members he knew and invited them to come back and sit in the stands with the current Blue Band during the homecoming game. The return was so popular that Dunlop invited everyone back the next year, but this time, the Alumni Blue Band members were allowed on the field to perform.
For years, Blue Band alumni would come back and march in the homecoming parade and then share the field with the current Blue Band during the homecoming game. Normally the Blue Band administrative assistant would help organize the yearly event with the help of Blue Band alumni that lived in the area. Local musicians like John Kovalchik, Dick Ammon and Rich Victor would be on hand to make sure things ran smoothly. However, the Alumni Blue Band was not officially associated with the university.
It wasn’t until 1998 that the Alumni Blue Band Association became an affiliate program group of the College of Arts and Architecture. For two years previous, O. Richard Bundy, then director of the Blue Band, oversaw a group of past Blue Band presidents, managers, drum majors and other Blue Band alumni to create a constitution and discuss what the Alumni Blue Band Association could offer to its members and the university. Past drum major Tommy Roberts and past Blue Band President Tom Range helped write the new constitution that had to be approved by the Penn State Alumni Association, and Russell Bloom would be the first president of this new organization in 1998. Range would be president in 1999, while Roberts would be elected in 2000. Now ABBA presidents serve a two-year term, though sometimes due to lack of interest in running for the position, they may serve longer.
Now that the ABBA was an official organization, a Homecoming Committee was created to organize the Alumni Blue Band’s participation, taking the burden off the Blue Band office. The Alumni Blue Band would march the homecoming parade and perform on the field for pregame and halftime until another yearly tradition was added to the Alumni Band’s performance docket: the student-alumni ice cream social. The ice cream social is hosted by the Penn State Alumni Association at the Hintz Family Alumni Center on Friday before the homecoming game. It occurs right after lunch and the Alumni Blue Band has been the entertainment since 2007, when Franco Harris was the grand marshal of homecoming and was a guest conductor of the Alumni Band. Originally, the Alumni Blue Band shared the spotlight with the Hi-Lows, but during the 2010s, the social would be shortened and the Alumni Blue Band would become the main entertainment.
The Alumni Blue Band would continue to do skits with homecoming grand marshals such as Lara Spencer, Keegan-Michael Key, John Urshal and Lisa Salters. One of the funniest skits was when then director Thomas Range (Bachelor of Science in Mathematics 1989) taught John Urshal (Bachelor of Science in Mathematics 2012, Master of Science in Mathematics 2013 and later Ph.D. in Mathematics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology) how to conduct using mathematical equations.
In 2002, the Alumni Blue Band expanded to performing in venues other than homecoming. Penn State Abington was celebrating the ifth anniversary of the renaming of the college from Penn State Ogontz. The commonwealth campus contacted the Blue Band, but the celebration was during the summer when students were not on campus, so the Blue Band reached out to the Alumni Blue Band to see if a pep band could be formed. The same thing happened in 2006 for the Penn State game against Notre Dame. The Penn State Alumni Association reached out to the Blue Band for a pep band to perform at the pep rally at the House of Blues in Chicago the night before, and then on the Nittany Express, a train from Chicago to South Bend, for the game. The Blue Band was actually going to the game and would be performing at a high school the night before and could not afford any members to go to the gig, so a group of 10 Alumni Blue Band members provided the entertainment at the pep rally and on the way to the game on the train. Unfortunately, Notre Dame walloped Penn State, 41-17.
The Alumni Blue Band would continue to play gigs at commonwealth student send-off parties, Penn State Days like the one held at Knoebel’s each year and even at some professional, minor and major league sporting events. For a few years, there was a Penn State Day at the Phillies, where the Alumni Blue Band pep band and the Penn State Abington cheerleaders would do a joint performance.
Pep band gigs would continue until COVID. In fact, a week before Major League Baseball shut down in 2020, a representative of the Alumni Blue Band was in negotiations with the Philadelphia Phillies and the Pittsburgh Pirates to see the possibility of a lighthearted competition of East vs West Penn State Days, with a portion of ticket sales going to the newly created Blue Band Legacy Fund. The pandemic put an end to the negotiations as well as to all pep band gigs.
Currently, the Alumni Blue Band provides a small pep band at the Penn State Day at Knoebels Park and the York student send-off at a York Revolution baseball game.
The pandemic also caused the cancellation of homecoming in 2020, and even though the Alumni Blue Band returned in 2021, it was a much smaller band to increase the distance between performers.
Starting in 2022, the Alumni Blue Band was allowed to be at full strength, and it is hoped that close to the 400 spots available for participation in this year’s band will be filled.
So when you see a member of the Alumni Blue Band walking down the street, or as they march by during the parade, make sure you wish them a happy birthday. The Alumni Blue Band looks pretty good at 60!
Did you know?
The Alumni Blue Band is older than:
—The drum major flip
—The feature twirler position
—The majorette line
—The silk line
—The floating lions drill
