In Memoriam: Bob Hoehn

[ColtFoutz]

I was saddened Thursday to learn of the death of a great drum corps luminary.

Bob Hoehn Jr., or Tootie, to his corps brethren, was one the first “ringer” Cavaliers, recruited by buddies Dan Horst and Bill Dragland to bring his baritone-playing chops to the Cavaliers ranks from Miami. This was back in 1960, when traveling to Logan Square from Evanston was seen as nutty. Bob was part of two Cavaliers’ VFW national championships, in 1961 and ’62, and took top individual honors on baritone three times at the big contest before aging out in 1962.

Bob stuck around in Cavaliers management through the early 1970s before leaving to help found and serve as first director for Spirit of Atlanta (now Spirit from JSU), with whom he was active at various times in the last three decades. He later founded DCI South.

I spoke to Bob for Building the Green Machine several times in the past few months, primarily to interview him about his time in the Cavaliers’ first golden age and also to hear his perspective on the formation of DCI. Bob was essentially running the buses in the early 1970s, along with Monk and other on-the-road assistants before Dan Heeres succeeded Don Warren as director in 1974. The Old Man wasn’t traveling much, and Bob saw a lot of hijinx. Which probably shouldn’t have surprised him. Back in his marching days, he’d created plenty himself.

But his family was instrumental in helping Don Warren’s fledgling Combine – later to become DCI – gain a foothold in 1971. Without Bob Hoehn Sr.’s seat-of-the-pants sponsorship of the Wheeling, Ill. home show that season – one of the first to feature the Santa Clara Vanguard, Troopers, Blue Stars, Madison Scouts and Cavaliers on the same lineup, with unprecedented participation money – there may not have been a DCI. The Hoehns took out a second mortgage on their home to back up ticket sales. There’s a longer saga here – and Bob told it well – with rain clouds parting, and the whole bit, but it comes down, as it often does, to one family’s unshakable faith. That was the Hoehns.

Bob and I had an extended interview on May 1 for the book. Some of what he said you can read there. As is the case, though, with nearly 2,000 pages of notes I took, a lot of it was squeezed or cut in the final revision. I was planning on excerpting some of that interview – “Tootie Uncut” – later this fall in the countdown to Building the Green Machine’s release. But I’m moved today to share a bit of it here. What follows is an episode from Bob’s account of his favorite season in management, 1970. May he rest in peace.

Colt Foutz, author

Building the Green Machine:

Don Warren and Sixty Years with the World Champion Cavaliers Drum & Bugle Corps

available to order NOW at www.cavaliers.org

From May 1 interview of Bob Hoehn, by Colt Foutz:

1970. In the years when I was there, I thought it was the most fun I ever had with the drum corps, because so many things happened that year. With Bobby Morrison, and The Chicken. This is the year we left out of upper state New York heading down to Miami for championship (they also went west to Casper, Wyo.), deadheading it down. We were gonna stop somewhere in south Georgia, or north Florida at a motel. That trip is the most fun I ever had in drum corps, and I’ve had a lot of them. … Roger Roussell was drum major, so he was basically the other one I was relying on to run the corps on the road. …

We were somewhere in Carolina, we had stopped to eat. And we get everybody back on the bus, and it was starting to get dark. So everybody was starting to fall asleep. We had already been on the buses quite a while and we still had quite a ways to go to the motel. I think it was in Jacksonville, Fla., and I’m sitting on the bus, and all of a sudden somebody in the back says, ‘What the hell is that? What’s that smell?’

I walked to the back of the bus, and I say, ‘What’s going on back here?’ and stuff like that. Everybody was laughing and carrying on. Bob Morrison looks at me and says, ‘I’ve got a chicken.’ And under his seat, the kid had a live chicken in a box! And he had, like, a twenty-pound bag of corn feed, the smallest bag you could buy. And I said, ‘Morrison, why do you have a chicken?’ And he went, ‘Well, I was walking down the street, and I walked past this store, and I looked in the window and I see this chicken. And I looked at the chicken, and the chicken looked at me, and we fell in love!’

And I went, ‘Get the chicken off the bus!’

And he went, ‘Oh, Hoehn, please, please don’t do that. I named him after you!’

Well, one of the kids bought an alligator somewhere along the way. We had an alligator and chicken on the bus. They had them at all these different stops – ‘buy a live baby alligator.’ People buy them down in Florida, take them back to Chicago, then flush them down the toilet! I told them, ‘OK. No more pets on the bus. Everybody get rid of the pets!’

And we stopped at this motel. And sometime during the night, a bunch of guys got into the sheets, like the Ku Klux Klan, ran into Morrison’s room, grabbed the chicken and hung it. On a tree. Outside the motel. When I walked out the next morning, first I saw the chick hanging from the tree. The older guys told me what had been done, they were kind of laughing. As we were pulling out, we spotted one of the maids at the motel down there with scissors, taking the chicken off. It was going to end up as her evening dinner.

Morrison was devastated. But he was the most fun. Him and Zoomey and the young Gengler kids. Those baritone players! And being a baritone player myself… .

[bawker]

Haha....god, that's a great anecdote, thanks for sharing that. :P

[ColtFoutz]

My honor, Bawker. Bob was a great guy taken too soon -- he was just 66. But on the phone, he sounded as young and mischevious as the 1960s baritone soloist he once was.

I should point out that longtime buddy and Cavaliers alum Paul Milano wrote a fine tribute here:

http://www.spiritdrumcorps.org/

[Russellrks]

I had heard the story about Bob Hoehn's personally financing the Wheeling show, a pivotal decision at a very fragile time for the newly formed DCI. I'm also familiar with his part in forming the Spirit of Atlanta, but I didn't know that he was the one responsible for the formation of Drum Corps South. Those are three major accomplishments right there and I'm sure there were a lot more. I can't wait to read the book. Thanks to you Colt for giving the man his due. It looks to me to be richly deserved.

[Jim Clark]

Bob taught many of us at Spirit our first lesson about the rewards of competitive excellence in drum corps...

"Beat XXXXXX tonight and it's steak dinners for everyone."

And when we did, he did.