Maybe you were in church this Sunday, and the preacher asked you to do something for the less fortunate. Maybe you are bummed the Redskins took a pounding from the Giants, and you want to change their luck. Perhaps you simply want to play the Good Samaritan.
Here’s a quick solution: Donate a few bucks to the Ballou High School Marching Band, so one of the best bands in the Washington region can march in the Rose Bowl parade and step its way down Fifth Avenue in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade.
I rarely see a way for a few dollars to make a direct change in the lives of high school kids and also resonate throughout their community.
This is the one.
Ballou sits on a rise in perhaps the most downtrodden section of Washington’s Southeast quadrant, a neighborhood where poverty and tragedy stalk young folks, especially teenagers.
Kids walking home from school have had to hit the pavement to avoid bullets from passing cars.
As I approached the school Wednesday afternoon, the “boom boom boom” of the bass drums pounded through the walls. Inside the school, I sought the drummers. I passed four boys playing French horn in the middle of one hallway.
I stopped to hear four girls practicing clarinet down the hall. Two more marched by playing their piccolos. Finally I reached the booming drums where I found the band director, Darrell Watson.
“When I started here 13 years ago, the instruments were falling apart, the horns were taped together, the uniforms were ripped,” he says.
Watson grew up down the street from Ballou. He was drum major in 1988, got a degree in music education at the University of District of Columbia and returned to Ballou to teach. He’s been band director for 13 years.
In 2004, a mercury spill closed Ballou and bullets flew in the halls. Watson applied to compete in the Home Depot Battle of the Bands — and won. “After those horrific events,” he said, “we needed some light on our school.”
With no help from the school or the city, Ballou raised funds and traveled and won acclaim. In Michelle Rhee’s first week as chancellor, she met with Watson and agreed to finance new instruments. “She answered our prayers,” he says. The band appeared on TV shows and is the subject of a movie. Last year, the invitations to the Rose Bowl and Macy’s came, but the money to make the trips did not.
The band needs $210,000 by November for travel, lodging and meals. They have raised $41,000 so far.
Why donate? Try this: “Music keeps us kids off the street,” says Terrell Thomas, who graduated last year but has volunteered to teach the band. “If I hadn’t had some place to go after school until 8 o’clock, I could have gotten into trouble.”
Send donations to Ballou Band Booster Association, P.O. Box 6969, Washington, DC, 20032. Or visit balloumovie.com to donate online.
And if the band can’t raise the cash?
“I guess we’ll be watching the other bands on TV,” says Darryl Jenkins, the band’s business manager.
E-mail Harry Jaffe at [email protected].
