Chateau Lloyd

As is my wont, yesterday I once again attended the annual reunion of the Michigan State Alumni Band.  I'm quite sore today and have a mild sunburn, but it was a great experience.

I think events like this are vastly underappreciated.  Even people who aren't a part of them, and for whom they are just background noise can take comfort that someone else is still into it.  That was my experience on campus.  The faces change, the buildings move around or are renovated, but the atmosphere is the same.

Tradition and respect for one's elders are cardinal virtues which is why the Great Enemy wants to destroy them.  This is why classic works must be disparaged and the respectful relationship between professor and student must be replaced with accusatory activism.

And yet despite all that, there are deeper bonds that remain.  When 74,000 people clap in unison to the fight song or sway back and forth as the Alma Mater is played, something profound is happening: a collective spirit is being renewed.

To put it another way, the sight of 575 graying people gamely trying to march down a street using moves they learned from 1 to 60 years ago might in some respects seem absurd if not pathetic.  Why would these people still to their late teens and early 20s?

The answer is that they are part of something larger than themselves, and wish to see it preserved, and far from reacting with ridicule at their efforts, the bystanders watch them pass shout praise and encouragement because many of them also treasure that time.

I know that when I watched the Alumni Band form and march as a student, I was somewhat in awe of them.  Back then, the "senior" members were from graduating classes in the 1930s, and I recall a sprightly drum major who could still gamely twirl his baton.  During a pause in play, he was allowed onto the field and did his routine to the roaring approval of the student section.

Time remorselessly advances, and perhaps that's another element in all of this.  The graduating classes are continually dying off, and the current "seniors" were born in the 1940s, graduating in the early 1960s.  My generation is now longer newly-graduated but instead settling into middle age and moving from parent to grandparent.  I marched with the son of one of my contemporaries who followed his father's path into the "student band."

I think this unspoken understanding that all traditions are under attack is why attendance is so high, particularly among younger people, which was not the case when I first participated.

Five years ago I first felt this profound sense of continuity, and it only getting stronger as the years have passed.  Particularly in a contentious election cycle, it was nice to leave all of that behind and focus on family updates, withering commentary on the current student band's defects (a venerable alumni tradition), and of course reminiscing.

Having the team win was merely icing on the cake.