I'm new to this site but have been lurking in the shadows for about a month now. About a year ago I found out my great great grandmother was a Keith and it's lead to my embracement of my family's scottish background.

Anyway I'm also a local historian here in Springfield, Mo. and about two months ago I started toying with the idea of trying to revive all of the old female drum and bugle corps that we used to have and tonight I happened to come across this particular post while doing random searches in Google and decided to post my idea in this new thread.

Quote Originally Posted by cajunscot
There is a large contingent of Scots in the DFW area, and across Texas in general -- and in June, the Arlington Games are held -- they might be able to do some fundraising in cooperation with the local Scottish societies.

In Springfield, we have all-girl drum & bugle corps that wear Highland attire -- the first contingent, the Central High School Kilties, were formed by a Scottish immigrant, R. Ritchie Robertson, in the 1920's -- over time, all five high schools in Springfield had their own corps:

Parkview HS Lassies (Gordon tartan)
Glendale HS Glengarry Scots (Lindsay)
Kickapoo HS Bonnie Buchanans (Buchanan)
Hillcrest HS Highlanders (Dress Stuart)
Central HS Kilties (Royal Stuart)

Sadly, only the Kilties and Highlanders remain -- the others were disbanded due to lack of interest. The Kilties are the most successful, and even got invited to march in the Lord Mayor of London's New Year's Day parade in 2002 -- our Scottish society dontated funds to help send them.

J. Higgins is usually pretty good to work with bands for kilts and other kit -- that seems to be one of their specialities.

Cheers,

Todd
So my idea is to form a group here in Springfield to help revive the drum and bugle corps at Parkview (disbanded in the late 1990's), Glendale (disbanded in 2001), and Kickapoo (disbanded in the mid 1980's). What I want to do is to get the support and possible help of the two remaining groups, the Kilties and the Highlanders, as well as try to get support from former members from the now defunct groups. I would also like to get alumni support from the other two active groups as well.

My main problem is I'm not sure how to go about getting started. I'm thinking that I need to talk to the boosters from the Kilties because they are the oldest group and they have the most active boosters (mainly because the boosters are largly made up of alumni). I also thought about getting some sort of artical in the local paper to alert the alumni (still in Springfield) from the defunct groups.

Would anyone have any suggestions for what else I might try? Also if anyone on this site lives in or near Springfield, would you be interested in helping me accomplish this?

That being said I know a couple of girls who were Glendale Scotties and what they told me is that the Scotties demise was mainly because of bad desicions from the Principal. I'm not sure what the full story is however because I haven't been able to cross refrence. Also I will point out that in 1997 when I was at Kickapoo Highschool I had some female friends try to revive the Bonnie Buchanans and they got a petition of about 50 girls and found tough oppositon from the band director and so it didn't get far.

For these reasons I think a joint force of the two remaining drum and bugle corps band to gether and help with the revival. These kilted corps make the Springfield high schools very unique and it would be a very awsome thing to have all five groups back.


Matthew Siegmann