During the her lunch break on 25 July 2009, the day of the Southeastern Championships in Atlanta, Bluecoats soprano Ashley Burgess, having suffered from multiple bouts of pink-eye this summer, suddenly found herself with no vision in her now painful left eye. After being rushed to the local emergency room in Stockbridge, GA, the E.R. doctor dilated and dyed her eye and found she had a corneal abrasion with a remote possibility of an ulcer. They gave her eye drops, patched her eye, gave her two percocets for the pain, prescribed more, booked an appointment with an optometrist for the following Monday, and sent her back to the rehearsal site 45 minutes before the Coats left for the Georgia Dome. After being strongly advised not to march, she showered, made adjustments to her patch, put on her uniform and marched anyway, unable to guide left without turning her head. Her disadvantage caused her to tick only one set the entire show which she quickly corrected in the middle of the move (no she was not part of the collision and spill, that happened in the back of the diamond form, her dot is in the front of that). The rest of her show was perfectly marched! The next day, the brass staff requested the patch she wore that night to be signed and dated, "Atlanta '09" by her and kept in the corps to be passed down along with other artifacts from the corps' past for years to come, and she received applause from the entire Bluecoats hornline as she took her spot in horn arc during sectionals.
Ashley embodies the gutsy passion for marching music that dwells within all drum corps members past and present. She represents us well, and I am the luckiest man on the face of the planet to be able to declare that Ash is my fiancee. I was in the Georgia Dome to watch her march that show last night. Words cannot describe how immensely proud I am of her.
Sorry to honk, but her story needed to be told.