Over five decades after the first term of my junior year of high school at Broad Ripple in Indianapolis, in the fall of 1963, my memories are obviously now very vague. The major historical event that term, of course, was on November 22, 1963, when JFK was eliminated in Dallas, Texas. But probably what was interesting me most on a daily basis, during both the first and second term of my junior year at Broad Ripple was being in the Broad Ripple High School band and marching band; and also rehearsing and being part of the pit band for the student production of the "Bells Are Ringing" Broadway musical from 1956 that Broad Ripple's Music Department head, Mr. Posten directed, during my junior year at that school. .
Playing tenor saxophone in the marching band at Broad Ripple H.S. meant that every Friday night during the fall term I'd be wearing my band uniform and cap and, along with the other high school band members, march on the football field in various formations during half-time, before hundreds of cheering high school football fans, under the bright night game lights of either our home high school football field/mini-stadium or, if it was an away game, under the bright night game lights of the opposing high school football team's field/mini-stadium--while playing some marching music for about 10 minutes.
In addition, we usually marched on and off the football field in formation at the beginning and end of the football games, and sat in the grandstands as a group while watching the four quarters of the football game; only playing there the music of our high school song together, whenever Broad Ripple's football team happened to score a touchdown or won a football game. In the fall of 1963, however, I can't recall Broad Ripple's football team either scoring many touchdowns or winning many of its football games that year.
I then found it exciting and fun during the time the band marched onto the football field in the various formations and played our music in front of the football fans; and watching a football game live from a statdium seat was still something I found interesting in the 1960's. But I can't recall conversing much with any of my other bandmates while we sat in the football field stands. Nor, when we rode on buses wearing our uniforms and carrying our instruments, before marching and playing at night at the home fields of the Indianapolis teams our football team was playing against, can I recall conversing much with any of the other band members; except maybe occasionally exchanging some pleasantries with Bill, Paul and Steve, who played the alto saxophones, and Jerry, who played the baritone saxophone.
And, aside from being impressed by the size of Arsenal Tech's football stadium on the Friday night we marched on that field, I can't recall much now about any individual football games. It all just vaguely blends in now into a vague blur of all the different games becoming one game.
One thing I do still recall more now is that, by the time I was a junior in high school, I was as interested in watching our marching band's physically attractive high school women baton twirlers in their shorts and Broad Ripple High School's physically attractive high school cheerleaders, moving around acrobatically while leading cheers on the football field, as I was in watching the high school football teams play each Friday evening in the fall of 1963.
A short high school senior guy, who seemed to have, in some ways, a slightly Napoleonic, slightly authoritarian personality leadership tendency, named Dick, was the drum major of Broad Ripple's high school marching band in the fall of 1963. In some ways, being selected as the high school band's drum major by Mr. Decker, the Broad Ripple High School's Band teacher/Band director, was, for a non-jock student who was into music, the equivalent in status to being selected by a high school football team's coach to be the starting quaterback of the school's football team.
And Dick, in addition to being named the drum major of Broad Ripple's high school band in his senior year, also was a member of the school's National Honor Society chapter, one of the team members on Broad Ripple's "It's Academic" team, that competed on a local Indianapolis television station against other local high schools' "It's Academic" teams. The "It's Academic" television show was one in which, similar to CBS's late 1950's and early 1960's nationally-televised "G.E. College Bowl" show, teams of intellectually quick students from different local high schools competed with one other team each week to see which team could answer correctly and more quickly the moderator's intellectual quiz show or triva-type questions.
And besides being the high school band's drum major, a National Honor Society chapter member and a member of Broad Ripple's "It's Academic" team, Dick was a also a member of the high school music department's Madgirgal Singers group and, unless my recollection is wrong, had a role in the student musical production that the high school music department produced during my junior year and during his senior year.
So, not surprisingly, the well-rounded Dick gained admittance to Columbia College in New York City from Indianapolis the year before I did (mainly because, without realizing that my second semester sophomore English "G" class teacher at Broad Ripple, Mrs. Griggs, was apparently a Columbia College Admissions "scout" in Indianapolis, I had, by chance, after my family had moved back to Queens before my senior year in high school, selected her as the teacher I wrote to in Indianapolis to ask to write a letter of recommendation to Columbia College, on my behalf).
Yet, although Dick had been such a prominent student in his senior year at Broad Ripple H.S. in Indianapolis, by the time I bumped into him during my freshman year at Columbia once, eating dinner in the John Jay Hall campus dormitory cafeteria in Manhattan, when Dick was a sophomore, Dick seemed to be less happy and a much less prominent student within the Columbia University scene than he had been at Broad Ripple.
Dick had apparently continued to involve himself in a Madrigal group of singers as an exta-curricular activity while at Columbia College. But he did not become involved much in either the Columbia College Citizenship Council scene or in the campus student anti-war movement/New Left/Columbia SDS sub-culture scene between 1965 and 1968, like I did.
So, ironically, it turned out that, what no one at Broad Ripple High School could have ever anticipated in the fall of 1963: that the then- tenor saxophone player in Broad Ripple's marching band would end up making more of an historical impact, accidentally, on the college scene he entered than its then-marching band drum major would. But, of course, no one at Broad Ripple High School at that time could have also ever anticipated that another member of my junior class in 1963, David Letterman, would end up hosting a New York City television network studio-based late evening television show, similar to what Johnny Carson and Jack Paar had hosted, for so many years, later in the 20th-century and early 21st-century.
