Looking to the past for a way to move forward

Peter Greene stood in front of a very small crowd sitting in lawn chairs on the rain soggy grounds of Bandstand Park Thursday night and gave a history of a band that overcame adversity for more than a century. And 2020 was a poignant reminder of what adversity throws at us.

The Franklin Silver Cornet Band is one of the oldest volunteer community bands in the country. Greene talked about a time a fire destroyed all the band's stuff..... but they survived. So COVID-19 wasn't as dire situation for the band as one would think, it was a hiccup that they had to get through.... safely.

"Thank you to our sponsors, thank you to the weather for holding out tonight and thank you for coming out," Greene said to the small crowd, "We've missed you!"

Greene emphasized how much these players just want to play.

​And they played.

Greene joked that the age of the band reflected more about experience than it did.... well.... age! They haven't been able to get together to practice safely so they relied on experience of their members to pull off Thursday night's return to performance.

​This band kicked off a summer concert series as it does every year. It will be followed by the 25th year for the Martha Heise creation HOLeY Jeans vocal ensemble. The Silver Cornet Band dominates the schedule, but area favorites will also be in attendance to entertain Franklin.

Below are more photos from this week of the band, which has a current member who can boasts ancestry back to the beginning. Greene said the member is the  great-great grandchildren of early band member.

Below is from Wikipedia: 
The Franklin Silver Cornet Band is the only non-military band to appear at both the Centennial and Bicentennial celebrations in Philadelphia. The band has made a number of other out-of-town appearances over the years, including performances at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York, Hershey Park, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC and the Henry Ford Museum. 

The band incorporated in the summer of 1873 with seventeen members, including a carriage maker, a dentist, a well worker, and several Civil War veterans. John E. Butler, one of the veterans, had traveled on an orphan train to Princeton, Indiana, where he was a drummer boy with the 17th Indiana Brigade.
The first known director of the band was William Bell, who had been a cornet player in his native England. 

Later directors of the band included Charles Brassington, who led the band from the 1880s until 1918, Charles Ackley, who had led the "house" band at Cedar Point amusement park, and Edwin W. Frye, who served the longest in that capacity, retiring from active bandmastering in 2000.
Currently Terri Wittreich is the esteemed director.

The band faced occasional difficulties. Hanna's Hall, where the band's rooms were located, burned down in 1886. The band itself briefly disbanded in 1919 but was aided in revival by the remnants of the Rocky Grove Band. In the 1950s, the band was sometimes no larger than a dozen men, and in the 1960s, it entered a joint venture with the American Legion Band of Oil City.

​But here thay are today, still playing, still telling the history of the area and of music.

Editor's Note: I am a person who grew up and left his hometown. I won't deny this. I truly didn't appreciate the rich history of my hometown. It is possible I still don't because I've moved forward. I've lived in western Pennsylvania now for almost 30 years. I do have to say there is something special about Franklin that in my five years at The Derrick I may not have fully realized, but in the last year of this pandemic I've truly come to realize. 

This town combines history and optimism like no other town I've come across.

​Truly good stuff!