In the grand scheme of things, 20 years is a relatively small amount of time. Folks get married, have kids, send them off to college, etc. Those events and milestones go by in the blink of an eye for many of us. Even so, memories, history, and legacies are forged in those fleeting periods of time. Good times, friendships, a culture? Yeah, all of those things tend to happen during that measure of time that goes by faster than any of us want. When something that’s become a part of life for you goes away after 20 years, it’s important to take a step back and recognize the moment for what it is.
Christy Walker and Mike Lee are, first and foremost, band heads. Both are a part of an aspect of HBCU culture that only a select number of people get to access and enjoy. 20 years ago, these two paragons of bandom thought it would be a great idea to create a place we bandsmen could call home; A place where folks from every cross-section of the HBCU-experience that have been linked together by the fraternity of marching in some of the most entertaining halftime ensembles on turf, could assemble, fellowship, talk trash, etc. The usage of online forums was still fairly new when ‘The Ranks’ (The predecessor of the 5Q) came into existence. It was uncharted territory for HBCU bandom in general. Online Communities? Feh…What’s that? It’ll never take hold…It’s a fad. You get the picture.
.Christy and Mike’s brainchild not only provided the foundations for a new means of viewing our craft from the inside out, but they built an online family in the process, chock full of ups and downs, new friends, painful losses. and people that will be tied together in friendship until the day they’re respectively pushing up daisies. The medium has birthed some pretty sweet memories for yours truly. This humble blog got its start on the debate forums of the 5Q; giving this writer the confidence to continue to pursue something that he didn’t know he was capable of. Stuff like that is an example of what these two have meant to those that are embedded in the sub-culture of HBCU Bandom.
From this blogger and preserver of the craft, thank you. Thank you both for being trailblazers. Thank you for stepping out on faith and putting something together that was (and still is) TRULY special for everybody that the forum ever touched. You’ll ALWAYS be at the top of that pantheon to these eyes. 😉😎
#PreserveTheCraft