Hall Of Fame Associate Member Gord Moffat Passes Away
Gord Moffat, an associate member of the World Drum Corps Hall of Fame inducted in 2002 during ceremonies in Scranton, Pennsylvania, passed away peacefully at the Carpenter Hospice in Burlington, Ontario recently after a long illness. His wife Laura was with him at the time of his passing. At his request, there will not be a funeral but a “party” to celebrate his life will be held at a later date.
He is the second associate member of the Hall of Fame to pass away in the past few weeks. Funeral mass for Gary Karpinski, a charter associate member of the World Drum Corps Hall of Fame, was celebrated on Tuesday, June 4 in Saint Matthias Roman Catholic Church in Somerset, New Jersey.
Gord Moffat was active as a performer, instructor and administrator over a number of years of drum corps activity. He served as president of the Canadian Ensemble and vice chair of the Great Alliance of Seniors (GAS) reunion in 2013.
In earlier years in the activity, he was an instructor for the Markham Girls drum and bugle corps and Brampton Senators from 1967 to 1970, played lead soprano with Burlington Commanders in 1971, then took a 25 year break from competition. He made up for the long absence with a flurry of activity in the 1990s, beginning in 1994 with the Guelph Royalaires parade corps.
Over the next few years, he played lead soprano with Toronto Signals, Ghost Riders mini corps, a Christmas brass ensemble performing concerts for the elderly and infirm, Bayou City Blues Mardi Gras Super Corps and the Great Alliance of Seniors (GAS) Canadian brass ensemble. A taste of competition with Ghost Riders prompted him to compete again, as a lead soprano with Racine Kilties. He also played lead soprano and solo soprano with Empire Statesmen of Rochester for several years.
He had recently served on the Toronto Signals music and show committee, assisted music director Barry Bell, who is also a Hall of Fame associate member, and played lead soprano in the horn line.
Since its founding in 1976 by the late Vince Bruni of Rochester, New York, membership in the World Drum Corps Hall of Fame has grown from six charter members to 467 regular and associate members from the United States and Canada, who have contributed to the activity across North America, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the Middle East, South Africa and Japan.
The World Drum Corps Hall of Fame is a non-profit organization honoring those individuals who have contributed significantly over many years to the development and continuing excellence of drum and bugle corps activity. The organization also seeks to preserve the history of the drum and bugle corps movement in North America by selecting a noteworthy junior and all age (senior) corps of the decade.
For more information about the World Drum Corps Hall of Fame, visit the web site at: http://www.worlddrumcorpshof.org/
