Blue Devil Marching Band Commences Summer Training

The Huntington High School Blue Devil marching band is engaged in its annual summer training program that has shifted band operations to J. Taylor Finley Middle School’s fields, gym and cafeteria.

This week’s camp features split sessions while next week’s will run daily from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. There will be a parent show on Sunday, August 23 at 2 p.m. on the Finley athletic field. It is free and open to the entire community.

The Blue Devils have competitions scheduled for Sunday, September 20 (Brentwood), Sunday, September 27 (Copiague), Saturday, October 3 (Malverne), Sunday, October 4 (Roslyn), Sunday, October 11 (Arlington), Saturday, October 24 (Mineola), Sunday, October 25 (Huntington home show) and Sunday, October 31 (New York State Championships at JMA Arena in Syracuse).

The band’s summer staff includes Andre Rizzuto (director), Michael Reed (assistant director), Jason Giachetti (battery design; pit design), Aleksander Justin (battery instructor), David Chavez-Hernandez (color guard design; color guard instructor), Michael Lawless (color guard instructor), Julia Flood (miscellaneous instructor), David Abrams (visual instructor) and Nicholas Danseglio (woodwind instructor).

The Blue Devil band was organized in 1934 and was open to boys and girls in all four classes, according to the 1936 edition of The Huntingtonian, the high school yearbook.  “Although newly organized, this group has worked very hard and with the cooperation of the student body, the band members have received blue and white uniforms,” states a yearbook entry. “They gave a new feeling of school spirit to all of the occasions at which they appeared this year.”

The 1936 yearbook is the first to picture the marching band dressed in traditional uniforms. The book notes the uniforms were the product of fellow students, most likely referring to a campaign by the General Organization to raise funds for their purchase or an outright grant of monies.

The first director was high school music teacher James C. Doty, who attended Oberlin College in Ohio. The 1936 drum major was Edwin Riggs. He is the first student listed in any yearbook as the drum major. Mr. Riggs, known as Eddie, was a member of the varsity basketball and track teams as a junior and senior, served as the Athletic Council president as a senior, was drama club stage manager for three years a member of the General Organization’s Executive Council and on the Question Mark (student newspaper) staff.

“Under the able direction of Mr. Doty, the musical leader, our band is expected to further the musical of the Huntington High School in the future,” states the 1936 Huntingtonian.  Principal Robert L. Simpson helped spur the development of the band. He was a devoted lover of music. Mr. Simpson wrote school songs, sang them and played musical instruments. Few things were closer to his heart than the music program at the school and in the community.

James Cloyd Doty came to Huntington in 1924 and began his supervision of the music department. The 1935 high school yearbook was dedicated to him. The dedication, listed on the yearbook’s second page extolled the teacher and music director: “Who through his devotion to music has helped many students to develop a love and appreciation of one of the fine arts.  Who by his sympathetic understanding of young people has both earned and enjoyed the love and respect of all those privileged to have been his pupils.”

That same 1935 yearbook depicts the band sitting on the stage at the old Huntington High School on Main Street (now Town Hall). Members were dressed in formal attire, with boys in jacket and tie. “Great progress was made this year by the band,” reads the caption under the photo on page 44 of The Huntingtonian. “Money was available for new instruments and through careful spending Mr. Doty purchased several which have filled out the band in both appearance and sound. Besides playing at games the band performed at the Huntington Theater, at Woodbury Avenue School, as a concert given for its own benefit at the high school and participated in the Music Festival at Lindenhurst.”

Since those early days, the Blue Devil marching band has continued to flourish and its alumni now number in the thousands.