That’s the question posed by Shirley Stubbs in her excellent letter in today’s Daily InterLake. We have two large high schools in Kalispell, Stubbs observes, high schools that frequently ask the voters to approve a bond or levy, yet when Independence Day arrives, neither high school gives a toot about appearing in the parade.
I share Stubb’s concern. As I have in many years past, I photographed the entire parade this year, taking several hundred shots. I got a very good look at everything. The police and firemen marched, as did the Boy Scouts; the Democrats, Republicans, and teabaggers. Miss Montana was there. Fez-topped big men in little cars wove down the street, as always. Our military turned out.
But the music was missing.
There were no high school bands. No bagpipers. No bar bands on flatbed trucks. Not one kazooist razzing out Yankee Doodle Dandy. Not even an iPod hooked to speakers blaring canned Sousa. Nothing.
But there was a huge yellow truck from a carpet cleaning company blasting a horn that rattled brains and dislodged fillings.
And it even wasn’t on the Fourth of July, a Sunday. What’s wrong with a parade on Sunday? Surely the churches would supply choirs and an organ to deliver stirring renditions of Onward Christian Soldiers.
Is this how Kalispell hopes to attract tourists? By holding Independence Day parades that feature big trucks with loud horns instead of local marching bands playing patriotic music? Seriously, I would like to know.
And I would like to know why the marching bands from Glacier and Flathead high schools were missing. Is patriotism no longer important to our public schools? Just hit the feedback button and let me know.
And let me know why, in an era of declining support for schools, School District 5 thinks it wise to go missing on Independence Day. Patriotism aside, I would think the district’s leaders would be savvy enough to make a presence on a day that is still important to the community; savvy enough to recognize the importance of waving both Old Glory and the colors of the schools. Not only would I put the bands in the parade, I would have the district’s trustees, staff, and faculty under the union banner, march — and march with pride and enthusiasm.
Show up, School District 5: it’s the right thing to do, and it just might help pass levies.