For decades the Rogers High School marching band has lifted spirits at football games, concerts, and community events. The band is standing on the steps of the Harris Hotel at the corner of Second and Elm Streets in this 1942 photograph. Among the band members was Harold Hawkins, who grew up in the Museum’s 1895 historic house. Floyd Pitts, second from the right in the back row, was the band director.

Just a couple of years before this photograph was taken, the RHS band attended a regional musical festival in Fort Smith for the first time. In 1940 the band performed admirably at that annual competition. The strutting majorettes in their plumed hats drew generous applause from the crowds that lined Garrison Avenue as bands from across Arkansas and Oklahoma competed for honors.

This same photograph appeared in the 1942 Mountaineer, which because of paper rationing was the last RHS yearbook to be published during World War II. That 1942 yearbook is one of many in the collections of the Rogers Historical Museum.
 

Rogers High School Marching Band, 1942.
Neg. # 21309.