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Sorry I couldn't get the pictures to post how I wanted  I don't want to waste people time posting links that don't work right.  I posted an article from 1954  about the west reading Police Cadets having problems finding a practice field on the DCP facebook site. I could not get the pictures of that article to post correctly on here

 

Edited by totaleefree
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It certainly might be a tougher task, for a touring corps in particular, to find rehearsal sites these days, with all the moving parts the corps of today have... but it's a time-honored problem.  LOL

For decades, corps at all levels have had to scramble at one time or another to find a site. Even the best-laid plans can go south at the last minute.

Edited by Fran Haring
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Being that it was West Reading I wonder if their quest then led to Bucs field eventually.  That West Reading group was sponsored by the city.  It sounds like the city said that the parks were too nice to have a drum corps there.

 

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50 minutes ago, totaleefree said:

Being that it was West Reading I wonder if their quest then led to Bucs field eventually.  That West Reading group was sponsored by the city.  It sounds like the city said that the parks were too nice to have a drum corps there.

 

Wow... even a corps with "police" in the name!!!   LOL

 

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2 hours ago, xandandl said:

but even that couldn't keep them in line and they went "Criminal" ho, ho, ho.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrhDLES-ES8

 

they were smooth tho

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The West Reading Police Cadets were really an idea of the police chief of West Reading as a way to keep the kids out of trouble during the summer.   I can't remember if there was such a thing in those days as "Juvenile Detention" (your father's BELT is what you were trying to avoid), but the police gave the "hell raisers" in West Reading a choice--either march with the Cadets or they'd make your life miserable.   Life was different in the 50's, and this was the first time some of these kids worked towards a cause;  discipline, hard work, esprit de corps, and the belief in something bigger than themselves worked wonders on these kids.   And, as intended by the police, many of these hell raisers grew up to become pillars of the community.  

I've been honored to present one of the Big Sounds awards, and on the night Amy had to hold the event at Governor Mifflin's stadium, I brought Charlie Ziegler along with me to make the presentation.  Seventy years prior, Charlie had been playing the bugle with the West Reading Police Cadets.   Charlie (who served in WW II) and Bill Kline (who served in Korea) were mentors to me when I came back from Vietnam. . . . a time when I was mad at the world and everyone in it.   To this day, I can't go to a parade or drum corps event without thinking of those guys. 

I still remember the yellow and black AeroCoach buses they kept parked at Dick Hinsey's Cities Service gas station at Fourth & Penn Avenues.   They looked like bumble bees on wheels!

The West Reading Police Cadets helped establish the concept of drum & bugle corps in Berks County.   When the Cadets finally disbanded, the Bucs were the "next step."  The "old guys" at the Bucs would have to say whether West Reading provided any impetus to the new organization.   Gotta say, though, that when I scan the stands at Big Sounds, there are still a few people left who will, fondly, talk with me about the people of the WR Police Cadets.   Nobody remembers too much about what the corps did, but they can talk for hours about its members!
 

 

 

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Lol had a member inducted at PA Hall of Fame and speaker said Reading instead of West Reading. 

In a "stage whisper" most of the crowd heard he said "WEST Reading"..

 

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If you can blow up the pictures to read the story it says how the corps was keeping kids off the street.  40 years ago when my dad was telling me about how he wished he had been in Reading so he could have joined them he showed me this book. When I looked at the names in the Drum line my drum instructor Rod Goodhart was there.  He was the head percussion judge at DCI and wrote the rule book for percussion judges at DCI.  However at the time my dad just said "Well if he was with West Reading he must be a good drummer.

 

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