hilltopics Images Features 7A Tuesday September 26, 2000 For comments, contact Clay McCuision at 864-4924 or e-mail features@kansan.com
Tuesday, September 26, 2000
Kansas marching band director Robert Foster directs the National Anthem before the football game against Southern Illinois University Saturday. Foster is no longer the director of the marching band, but is still the director of KU bands. Photo by Matt J.Daugherty/KANSAN
Holding last note
Marching Jayhawk Bob Foster leaves band legacy
By Nathan Willis Kansan editor
B
ob Foster climbed the ladder and stood in front of the Marching Jayhawks.
Foster, director of bands, led the band through the Star-Spangled Banner, the alma mater and the Rock Chalk Chant with
crisp, sweeping strokes Sunday as the 53rd Annual University of Kansas Band Day continued under gray skies and with a persistent drizzle.
After that, he stepped aside.
It was the first band day in 30 years that Foster wasn't at the helm. Earlier this year, he stepped down as director of the Marching Jayhawks after arriving and taking over the band in 1971. In that span, the marching band and Foster himself have seen national success and recognition, as well as the band's share of change.
Passing the baton
Foster remains director of bands and conducts a symphonic band. But, Foster said, the marching band is the most visible aspect of the band program. He said he felt it was important to have a passing of the baton ceremony from himself to Timothy Oliver, the new director of the marching band, before the first home football game Sept. 16.
Foster said Oliver took over for him because the University created a new position of marching band director—a post that had historically been filled by the director of bands.
"It it was something that needed to happen." Foster said. "It was the right thing to happen at the right time."
Oliver said the demands of marching band and overseeing the entire band department were too much for anyone to handle.
"Really, this position was created in an effort to provide some muchneeded faculty support," he said.
Foster said the new arrangement would allow him to focus on specific areas of the program. Still, he said, his time as director of the Marching
"It seems like a very short amount of time," he said. "Working with students, there's always new adventures."
A cut above
Foster's success during his tenure as director of the
Lori Neuman, St. Louis junior and a three-year veteran of the marching band, said she picked the University in part because she knew the reputations of the University bands and of Foster.
"Bob is a legend in the nation," said Frank Tracz, director of bands and of the marching band at Kansas State University. "He's one of the pillars of the field."
marching band has brought him considerable recognition.
"In high school, a band director told me to apply to KU because of the quality of bands and because of him," she said. "He's one of the nicest band directors there is. He's a smiling face that you can always depend on."
"Bob is a legend in the nation. He's one of the pillars of the field."
Foster's bands have also garnered
national awards. In 1989, for example, the KU Marching Band was selected as the seventh band in the nation to win the Sudler Trophy for Collegiate Marching Band.
But Foster lists other things as the highlights of his career. There were the five bowl games the Jayhawks went to.
"Those are major, major, major national events," he said, "and the band has the opportunity to participate."
Frank Tracz director of bands at Kansas State
One of his favorite memories was
director of bands at Kansas State
University
rite memories was
when the band received the game ball after the football team beat Iowa State in Ames, Iowa, during the 1970s. Then-coach Don Fambrough ran across the field and gave it to the band.
heart out despite enduring broken down buses and the inability to get motel rooms in Ames the night before.
"At the beginning of the game, it didn't look like the band was going to make it," Fambrough said. "And all of a sudden, we heard the KU fight song. It was all I could do to keep those guys under control. They were a two-touchdown underdog, but boy, they won that day."
The ball, faded and worn, still sits on the top shelf of a bookcase in Foster's office.
A tradition of tradition
Foster made several changes in the band during his tenure. When he
arrived in 1971, the marching band was segregated by gender no girls were allowed.
Within a year, he had desegregated it.
"It had to be done delicately because there were some people against it," he said. "But I don't see how a University that is a defender of individual freedoms and individual rights can have something discriminatory like that."
He also started the tradition of the band marching down Campanile hill and into Memorial Stadium before games and modified the pregame performances of the band.
Through it all, though, Foster said what kept the band among the elite was its emphasis on tradition and stability. When Foster arrived in 1971, he became just the fifth director of the KU Marching Band, whose history spans back to the turn of the century.
Such continuity is something few programs have.
"It is rare to see someone last as long as Bob," said Tracz, who has been at Kansas State for eight years. "This business eats you up, spits you out and steps on you."
Despite that, Foster, 61, has no plans to retire. Instead, he will continue overseeing the band program, as well as composing and arranging.
"I don't play golf, and I don't fish; I do band things," Poster said. "I can't imagine what else I could do that would be this much fun."
— Edited by Clay McCuistion
Even though he is no longer the director of the Marching Jayhawks, Bob Foster still directs the band through the National Anthem, the Alma Mater and the fight song. He passed his baton to Timothy Oliver on Sept. 16. Photo by Christina Neff/KANSAN
Robert E.
Foster
Born: Jan. 21, 1939
Birth: Raymondville, Texas
Born: Jan. 21, 1930
Birthplace: Raymondville, Texas
Family, a wife and three children, all of whom have attended the University of Kansas 1073
Number of marching band directors at Kansas before him: four
Number of head football coaches
of Kumene durbin bhutai, nine.
Kansas' football record during his tenure: 135-186
Other facts: His father was a high school band director, and all three of his children have been in the KU Marching Band. The band plays his arrangement of "Home on the Range" before games.
.