First published in April 2005
in the Uniontown Herald-Standard
By Al Owens
A few years back, I encountered the Reverend Robert Crable
while walking the track at Uniontown Area High School. Reverend
Crable had been an equipment manager for the Uniontown High School
football team in the 1960’s. He’s as nostalgic as I am. What he told
me that day shocked and thrilled me. It seems one night in the
‘60’s, while the Red Raiders were in the locker room preparing to
take the field against yet another in a series of hapless victims,
the Uniontown Red Raider Marching Band beat them to the punch!
As the reverend’s story goes, the opposing team was still on
the field loosening up. The band marched to the edge of the field in
near silence. Then suddenly, without much warning, the band exploded
into action! Reverend Crable says by the startled looks on the other
team’s faces, Uniontown’s football team had already won the game.
Being a Red Raider band member myself, I’d like to take
credit for that win, but logic and Reverend Crable would never allow
me to do that. Instead I’ll give the real credit to the band’s
legendary Maestro - Orville Conn. A man I’ve given a lot of credit
to, and for a lot of things, since the days he surprisingly allowed
me to wear Maroon and White. You see, I was too slow for basketball,
too skinny for football and too scared to wrestle. To play in the
band, all I needed to do was convince people I knew something about
music. (To me, that’s been my greatest accomplishment in life!)
Mr. Conn, you must understand, knew music - and how to play it.
After graduating from Uniontown High School in the early 1950’s, he
split his music teaching duties at Washington High School, with a
tour as a bugle player in the US Army’s 61st Army Band. By 1960, he
was ready to come back to Uniontown so he could inflict his musical
“savagery” on opposing football teams. Shortly after he arrived he
took the Red Raider band to Pasadena, California to perform in the
Tournament of Roses Parade. That morning the entire country got a
chance to see Mr. Conn and his charges do what crowds in Uniontown,
Pennsylvania learned the previous fall. On that New Year’s day a
spirited group of high stepping, instrument swinging young musicians
caused jaws to drop nationwide. A couple of years later, the
nation’s jaws got another Orville Conn workout. This time he’d help
slap a little Uniontown, Pa. on the Orange Bowl Parade.
Mr. Conn may have been feeling very good about what he’d been
accomplishing with his marching and concert bands, along with his
work with Uniontown High’s choral groups, until I showed up in 1963.
I must have been his toughest challenge. I still fondly remember
that glorious Monday morning in August of ’63, when I walked from
the East End to the field behind Ben Franklin Junior High School for
a week as grueling as my military basic training. Did I say fondly?
Well I remember it. I remember how, by week’s end, I’d learned to
march, with my thighs lifted to parallel the ground, with my toes
pointed downward and my head held high. I’d learned to walk about 15
years earlier, but this was something completely different.
Especially since Orville Conn’s “line leaders” made you do it
blindfolded, and so that with every eighth step one of your toes
would have to touch a five yard marker every time! (Something I can
still do to this day, I think!)
All of this was Orville Conn’s way of saying, “If you want to wear
Maroon and White, you’ll have to suffer to within an inch of your
life to do it”. I suffered quite willingly, of course. That’s
because I’d seen entire stadiums stand and cheer when the Red Raider
band would march onto a football field and prance off it. Prancing,
by the way, was another of Orville Conn’s inventions. Or the US
Army’s. Or the devils. At the close of every halftime show, there’d
be four blasts from a whistle, and the Red Raider Band would simply
go into a quick step (to a drum beat) until they mercifully reached
the stands. I’m not sure if the crowds were cheering because Orville
Conn hadn’t killed us, or because they just loved watching young
musicians “leave it all on the field”.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, presenting the marching magic of the maroon
and white Raider Marching Band”. That was our battle cry. The signal
to send visiting teams (according to Rev. Crable) and entire
stadiums into fits of frenzy. I still remember marching tall along
Main Street for May Day and Fall Foliage parades and having the
younger kids running up and marching along side us. Those kids just
wanted to be part of something special. To them it was so rousing
and positive that they’d join piccolo players and tuba players to
feel it. And I knew exactly how they felt. I was so honored to have
been taught pride and precision by a man who seemed to have created
them that I wished everybody in town could join us.
A couple of years ago, I made the effort to contact Mr. Conn.
I emailed him a message and told him how much I’d appreciated what
he’d done for me and this town. I was floored to know he still
remembered me. (I think because I may have played a horn that
somehow played the all the wrong notes for three solid years) He
told me he’d left Uniontown in 1968 and moved across the state and
taught other budding musicians for a number of years, before
retiring in the mid-1990’s.
Unfortunately, after those kind words were exchanged, I never
heard from Orville Conn again. Last week, I got a message from his
son Matt, who told me his father had died after a long battle with
cancer. As you may tell, I was deeply saddened. Orville Conn had
provided so many warm personal memories for me, and so many
wonderful moments for all of us who’d heard and seen the powerful
results of his work, he should never be forgotten.
Gabriel, Orville Conn is on the way. You’d better get ready to learn
to prance!
e.a.
owens
webmaster Red Raider Nation
