Members of the 287th Army Band love to close out their Fourth of July show with a bang — or, rather, a boom.
The band, assigned to the Delaware National Guard, has made a tradition of ending its Independence Day concerts with Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture,” a work whose thundering finale is accompanied by shells blasted from Army cannons.
The show will be a featured part of the city of Dover’s Fourth of July celebrations, to be held on the Legislative Mall this coming Saturday, and also will stop at Killen’s Pond State Park.
The annual extravaganza gives band members a chance to show civilian audiences what they’re made of.
“Our mission has always been to raise morale and to take [soldiers’] minds off missing home,” said band spokeswoman Sgt. 1st Class Rachel Longfellow. “It gives them a little peace knowing we’re there to support them.”
And, of course, it also gives those who the troops leave behind the knowledge their loved ones can enjoy a little bit of home while fighting in some of the world’s hot spots.
The various branches of the U.S. military have had bands of some type or another since Colonial times. In addition to keeping up morale, band members were used to sound the familiar reveille to start a soldier’s day and a tattoo to end it.
Although the 287th has yet to be sent overseas, at least three National Guard bands have been deployed to the Middle East, and one former Delaware Guardsman, now a member of the Texas National Guard, is set to go to Southwest Asia, Longfellow said.
The 287th’s history dates back to around the end of World War I, Longfellow said. It has a maximum of 40 members, and like the rest of the Guard, its members run the gamut of careers in civilian life.
“We’ve got a guy who’s a flight nurse from a neonatal intensive care unit in a Philadelphia hospital, we’ve got the finance director for the Appoquinimink School District, we’ve got music educators, engineers, students, physical therapists and X-ray technicians,” she said.
Members of the 287th live as close to Dover as Milford, and as far away as Georgia.
Longfellow, who in civilian life is a licensed veterinary technician, started her own career in the active duty Army as an oboe player. Like other members of the 287th Band, however, she also doubles on other instruments as needed.
