Memories of USC turning 100 (1980)

My sophomore year at the University of Southern California was a milestone year - the school's 100th birthday! To celebrate, our band cut a new album, with the cover shown above (and in the pale yellow on either side of the drum major's feet, it reads "1880 - 1980").

We also, of course, threw a birthday party at one of our halftime shows that fall. Here's our grand entrance down the peristyle steps at the Coliseum - something we only did on special occasions:

And here's part of the actual halftime show, complete with a giant birthday cake and more horses than usual running around the track!

If I remember correctly, we actually changed uniforms between the pre-game show and halftime, debuting our new uniforms for the big party. Here I am marching to the Coliseum before the game in our old uniforms (with the exception of the helmet, which was our new version; you can see that the brush on top is the darker red, which was our new color):

To get a good look at our old helmet, here we are in the full old uniforms, from the 1980 Rose Parade in January (that's me, four in):

And here's the tuba section from around that time (perhaps 1981?) where you can see how different our new uniforms looked (darker red, embroidered Trojan shield on the chest, stripes on the pants, white spats and gloves, full wire brush plume on the helmet, with an embroidered visor that stuck out further than the old plastic one with buttons, and, what you can't see here, capes that were about the size and design of our old ones):

That morning, my parents even took a few photographs of our final practice on Cromwell field (that's me in the blue and red striped shirt):

And here I am, posing with a few "fans," which are actually the young daughters of some good friends of ours from church back then, Jeff and Marie Robinson, who are USC alums. Oh, and that's my section leader, Keala Sereno, behind me in the center of the photo, with dark hair. He was a great friend!

The Sousaphones we were using at that time were built by King, and I remember them sounding great! We had 16 players in the tuba section - four squads of four horns.

And here we are, playing for the crowd on campus at Heritage Hall, before marching to the Coliseum for the game and the 100th birthday celebration!

Ah, yes, such great memories - Fight On!