Louie Nelson was a worker bee. The Mud Bay homesteader, inventor and musician liked getting things done.
On the Haines Arts Council in the early 1990s, Louie could be counted on to advocate for more brass instrument music and to provide fruit juice for the refreshments stand at every performance. At council meetings, Louie also advocated for a marching band.
As we other council members were satisfied to be able to bring traveling troubadours to the Chilkat Center, we were about as likely to form a marching band as we were to send a rocket to the moon.
But Louie was persistent. He claimed that he owned 10,000 pieces of marching band sheet music that he would donate if the town would just start a marching band. He said businesses could sponsor uniforms.
At every meeting, we listened patiently to Louie’s appeal, as Louie was a dependable council member and we needed his fruit juice. His 10,000 pieces of marching band sheet music became something of an inside joke among councilors.
More than 10 years later, Louie died and his daughter Carol Tuynman phoned and asked if I couldn’t help her get two, giant file cabinets out of the upstairs of her father’s house. I jumped at the opportunity. Could it be the mythic 10,000 pieces of marching band music?
Indeed, it was. Much of it was historic, including yellowing band books from a pre-integration all-black school. Some was European. Books of Sousa marches and Christmas music were stamped “Haines High School,” suggesting Louie scooped them up after some former music teacher jettisoned them. Where he got the rest of it is anyone’s guess.
Carol wasn’t ready to part with the music, but she wanted it out of the house. I promised her it would be kept for community use. Music teacher Matt Davis and I moved the file cabinets to the high school music room, making it available to Haines students and also to the fledgling Haines Community Marching Band.
The marching band is now into its eighth year, and Louie’s music has proved a godsend, particularly for parades on the Fourth of July and Christmas. The band, made up by students and adults, ranges between eight and 25 members, depending on the weather and what else is going on in town.
The band still doesn’t have proper uniforms, but members try to dress alike, or at least to wear matching hats and shirts. It also owns 10 instruments, including a sousaphone paid for with community donations.
There’s no straight line between Louie Nelson and the Haines Community Marching Band. Sue Waterhouse, a more recent resident and musician, pushed to make the band a reality, and she never knew Louie.
But Louie had an idea, a hot ember he wouldn’t let get cold that eventually caught fire.
Our band doesn’t yet live up to Louie’s dream, but it’s a band, and it brings some pep to our town’s parades. It’s more akin to Harold Hill’s student band in “The Music Man” than to anything you would see at a football game halftime show. And because it’s solely reliant on volunteers, it may or may not last very long.
That it’s generally disorganized, rehearses at the last minute and sometimes plays off-key contributes to our band’s charm, just as a crazy old coot with 10,000 pieces of sheet music looking for a band to play it is part of its legend.