Memory of my first gig
From the age of 11 through my senior year's summer break, I was a fifer
The car behind my head let’s me know that I’m looking toward Francis Street. Our "beehive” oven behind us allowed us to demonstrate baking - eighteenth century military camp style. Kevin is on a drum that touts “Virginia for Constitutional Liberty while another bears the S.G. Regt just behind me. That’s the State Garrison Regiment, formed 200 years before this picture was taken, in 1778. It’s a timely reminder of Kevin who was just a week or two older than I am. He was tragically killed by a drunk driver in 2011. Strikingly, Kevin was the first person who ever told me that I might need to “learn my limits” at one of our high-school parties - of which there were many in the years between 1978 and 1981 when we both graduated from Lafayette High School.
It wasn’t immediate, but eventually, I did learn my limits and have been alcohol free for most of the past 40 years - with some exceptions. Lessons have been learned. Experience has been garnered. Kevin and I last marched together on July 5, 2008. This was on the occasion of the first day in the second half-century of our Corps existence.
This is me marching a couple of years earlier. I had just attained the rank of Corporal and am marching in the Junior Corps here. By the time the shot of Kevin and me playing together was made, I was one of the instructors of the younger members of the Corps and would do that until graduating. It was a unique experience and a good grounding for the rest of my life.
If anyone wants more information about all of this, it can be easily found out on the Internet, to be sure, but I felt it was time to write a little bit about my friendship with Kevin and how he was instrumental at helping to shape who I am these days. He went on to found “The Mountain Fife and Drum Corps” which is still active in California.
A powerful legacy to a remarkable human being, the Mountain Fife and Drum Corps will be performing again at Drummers Call in Williamsburg, VA in May 2026. In a full circle kind of synchronicity, one of the last fifers to have been selected by Kevin personally to join the Mountain Corps is now a fife instructor for the Colonial Williamsburg Fife and Drum Corps where he got his start back in January 1974.
Hat’s off to Catrina Richter and all who loved Kevin in this life. We won’t see his like again soon, I’d warrant! Still, so long as there are drums being beaten, he lives on.
A very nice tribute to your friend..