Walter Aldine “W.A.” Thomason, was a talented drum major, twirler and tumbler for North Carolina State University. His earliest recorded performance at the University was in 1940. According to Ancestry.com, Thomason was born in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1920 and died in 1989. He...
Brown University students Robert Hackett (1919-2003), Class of 1941, and Kenneth M. Greene (1920-2021), Class of 1942, pose with guest majorette Betty Brown Lee, 1942. Brown was an Ice Capades star. Photo Source: Brown University Alumni Magazine. Photo published with permission. Here is another...
Please check out our newest page, Mark Nash, A Living Legend. Click here to see it now. In case anyone is wondering, pages provide better design features than posts while posts allow for categorizing and tagging. Thus, we published this content as a page but want to take advantage of...
The following article is reprinted with permission from the Chicago Sun Times. It was originally published on April 22, 2015. Before World War II, baton twirling was dominated by men. And Gene Shea was one of the best. He twirled across the nation and in Canada, Ireland, Korea and Japan. He met...
Willard Everett Roth was born in 1892 in Warren, Pennsylvania, and died at the age of 80 in Palenville, New York. As a young child, in 1898-99, he was the drum major in his father’s marching band. The Roth Band marched in parades including the parade and reception escorting soldiers home...
Check out the future drum major. He’s ready to lead the band in his rolled up cuffed blue jeans and plaid shirt. This photo was likely taken in the early 1950s. It features a young boy who appears to be around 8-years-old. Sitting in the big floral chair is presumably his younger sister,...
Recently, we received an email recently asking if we’d ever come across any photos of Dale White, a much-beloved living legend in the sport of baton twirling and “the most decorated baton twirling coach” in the sports history. We appreciated the email and so we did some digging....
The following information was copied from a website that is using deprecated HTML elements. We’ve preserved it here for its historical significance. We edited the original for clarity. Victor with his daughters Vicki and Lana. Victor Faber started his baton twirling career in 1937 under the...
Happy Fourth of July! Here is a special treat for everyone. On July 4, 1978, the 11-year-old Illinois Boys Baton Twirling Champion performed on Bozo’s Circus. The show aired on WGN, a local Chicago station. It was preserved by The Museum of Classic Chicago Television, also known as Fuzzy...
Robert Olmstead was a band leader and early instructor in baton twirling in the United States. Born in California in 1915, he grew up performing in vaudeville shows. He played multiple instruments and became a highly skilled twirler who twirled batons on slackwire. In college, Olmstead...
In 1960, Warren Bass wowed the fans on Mizzou’s Faurot Field at Memorial Stadium as the drum major for Sumner High School, St. Louis, Missouri. The occasion was Mizzou’s High School Band Day. At the time, Bass had never had professional baton twirling lessons and actually started...
Rural New Mexican Norm Crider was born in 1938 and influenced a generation of French and Italian baton twirlers. Here are 15 facts about the late international champion and college feature twirler. 1 Born in 1938 in Lordsburg, New Mexico, he spent most his childhood in Southwest New Mexico....
