Passing Of Hall Of Fame Member Rod Goodhart

A memorial service for World Drum Corps Hall of Fame member Rod Goodhart, age 75, was held at Hillside United Methodist Church, 4474 Towne Lake Parkway in Woodstock, Georgia on Saturday, September 7. A gathering of family and friends will took place at the church following the service. He passed away the morning of September 3.

He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1984, the second of many former members of the United States Air Force Drum and Bugle Corps eventually elected to the Hall of Fame. The first was Truman Crawford, inducted in 1979.

Following his years of service, Rod Goodhart was drum instructor of Baltimore’s Yankee Rebels for about 10 years. He was widely considered to be an excellent teacher and attracted many excellent drummers to the corps. He was the first drum instructor to field a 12-man snare line. He also served as a percussion judge for Drum Corps International (DCI), beginning in 1971.

The late Vince Bruni of Rochester, New York, who passed away 10 years ago on the Friday evening of the Drum Corps Associates (DCA) championship tournament weekend in 2003, founded the World Drum Corps Hall of Fame in 1976. Membership has since grown from six charter members – Vince Bruni, George Bull, Jim Costello, Henry “Lefty” Mayer, Harvey Olderman, Vinnie Ratford – to 277 regular and 194 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 each decade since 1940. Those corps are:

1940s: Holy Name Cadets and Lt. Norman Prince

1950s: St. Vincent’s Cadets and Reilly Raiders

1960s: Chicago Cavaliers and Hawthorne Caballeros

1970s: Santa Clara Vanguard and Hawthorne Caballeros

1980s: Blue Devils and Sunrisers

1990s: Cadets of Bergen County and Empire Statesmen

2000s: Cavaliers of Rosemont and Reading Buccaneers

For more information about the World Drum Corps Hall of Fame, visit the web site at: http://www.worlddrumcorpshof.org/