Banding together

A girl’s visit to the dentist set the tune. The crescendo was a first-prize award at the state fair in 1936, and the climax was a trip three years later to the World’s Fair in New York City.

Sadly, the finale came from New York state, which closed the book on a celebrated band that was the pride and joy of the Children’s Home of Jefferson County, according to one of the State Street facility’s former performers.

The facility this year marks its 150th anniversary. It dates back to March 1, 1859, when two orphaned children were given a home.

It was a fixture in Watertown when in 1927 a Burrville couple took charge. During the subsequent 14-year administration of Eugene H. and Elizabeth C. Jones Bunce, this home for orphaned and destitute children developed a music program that drew applause around the state.

As Mr. and Mrs. Bunce heard “their” children join in song, they decided that some instrumental accompaniment might work well. They purchased five harmonicas along with instruction booklets, enabling five residents to teach themselves how to play, according to an undated news clipping.

Then, one Christmas — we are not told what year — someone gave the home a mandolin. But no instructions came with it.

This was the situation when a resident was in the office of Dr. Guy Harold Cole to have her teeth examined. The child found a sympathetic ear when she told the dentist about this instrument that nobody knew how to play.

Dr. Cole was a musician. Touched by his patient’s revelation, he volunteered to teach a student to play the mandolin. As the news clip says, he arrived to find four residents ready to learn. Three watched, listened and learned as the doctor guided his lead student.

Meanwhile, another mandolin came as a gift, and then a cornet. The dentist continued his visits to the home for a few years, nurturing the musical interest. The Song-a-Phone Band and a harmonica club became the fruits of his work.

After Dr. Cole pulled out, Earl F. Cornwell stepped in, if only briefly.

His livelihood had been as a machinist, but Mr. Cornwell, then about 60, was a much-traveled musician, the cornet being his instrument.

Back in 1903, he was with the “city band” that accompanied the Red and Black football team to Madison Square Garden in New York City. Early in the 1920s, he organized an orchestra for the Wasco Club, a local community service organization. The band stayed together about a decade.

He also played in Frank A. Empsall’s Continental Drum Corps, which was formed in 1918 and was active for several years.

Although he would live to be 91, dying in 1971, illness cut short Mr. Cornwell’s service to the Children’s Home, and a band was yet to be formed. That detail was picked up by Thurston T. Lewis. And in a big way.

A brief story in the Watertown Daily Times on April 6, 1931, revealed a new development on the children’s home campus on State Street:

“Thurston T. Lewis, noted musician, whose ‘Rube’ band has been a vaudeville and talking picture hit throughout the country during the past few years, is organizing a brass band among the boys of the Children’s Home of Jefferson County.”

The son of musician and orchestra leader Charles G. Lewis, Thurston Lewis had been playing musical instruments since he was 8. The Watertown native made his first stage appearance at 15, when he began a four-year run as cornet soloist for the orchestra of the old City Opera house.

His résumé included conducting a 12-piece orchestra for the Thousand Island Yacht Club, playing with John Philip Sousa’s band, performing with a vaudeville musical act, and touring as assistant band leader with the Barnum and Bailey Circus.

He played himself in one of the early “talkies,” a 1929 motion picture remake of a musical that he scored, “Rubeville,” the show referred to in the Times article.

After bringing his baton to the Children’s Home and working with students for two weeks, he found them ready to perform.

He gathered 15 instruments through loan and gift, and announced that he was hoping to obtain more. The solicitation was well received, and he eventually formed three bands in accordance to the ages and abilities of his students.

“I was 10 when I came into the Children’s Home in 1935,” said Arthur H. Parker, Black River, “and Mrs. Bunce stuck a clarinet in my hand and said, ‘This is what you are going to play.’”

Nobody had a choice, he said. Mrs. Bunce required everybody to learn an instrument.

“Mr. Lewis was an older man,” Mr. Parker said. “We only saw him at practice and at concerts. He liked kids, enjoyed his job. I don’t remember him being excessively strict. He knew his business, and he was 95 percent responsible for the band being so good.”

Rita Morse Dempster, Weaver Road, who played trumpet, recalled him as “a big impressionable man” who “led us on special occasions.”

Mr. Lewis wasted no time in introducing his youthful entertainers to the community, conducting in 1931 the first of several annual concerts on the lawn of the Children’s Home. Two years later, in August, the event was reported to have attracted “several thousand persons.”

There were other performances, such as on March 18, 1932, at Watertown High School, an opera in 1934 at the Avon Theater and another concert on Feb. 1, 1935, at South Junior High School. This one, said a writer for the Times, was “the best yet presented by this notable organization of young people.”

The director was now ready to showcase the band on a bigger stage. Competing at the state fair in 1935, Mr. Lewis’s group won second prize, consisting of $75 and a wall plaque.

The 35-piece group, its members ranging in age from 9 to 18, was the smallest of the 15 participating junior bands. They were judged on program arrangement, quality of numbers, presentation, conducting, interpretation, tone, intonation, general affect, uniforms, cleanliness of instruments, position and discipline.

Each band played a 45-minute program, including two numbers from a required list.

Mr. Lewis in 1935 added to his workload by becoming director of the Watertown High School Band. Many of his school band members were with his Children’s Home band.

“It was a big part of our lives,” Mrs. Dempster said. “We had band practice at the home every Sunday at 5 p.m., then we’d carry our instruments to school for practice there and then bring them back to the home for sectional practice every night of the week.”

The director took his Children’s Home group back to the state fair in 1936 to compete again, and this time, experience paid off. They came home with the first-place trophy and a $100 prize. Not only that, but one of their members, Harland Flora, who often substituted for Mr. Lewis as conductor, was named first-place soloist for his cornet playing.

Dr. Cole, the man who had helped bring music to the Children’s Home, just missed seeing the first-place finish. He died at 54 on Aug. 23, 1936.

Late in July 1938, the 50-piece band entertained a large crowd at Thompson Park. The Times subsequently praised the performers for their “ability and resourcefulness.”

After singling out some of the solo and duet performers, an editorialist observed, “The band handles the marches of Sousa and Goldman with rare finesse and branches out into its specialty numbers with amazing confidence and versatility.”

Bolstered by that praise, Mr. Lewis’s band was ready for its big day — Aug. 18, 1938, when it played “The Star-Spangled Banner” in front of President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the dedication of the Thousand Islands Bridge.

“No doubt the day was exceedingly warm, but many of us hardly noticed this,” a band member, the late Anne Engel, wrote after the event. “Our minds were wrapped in the ecstasy of seeing our president.”

After Mr. Roosevelt left the ceremonies, W. Grant Mitchell, secretary of the Thousand Islands Bridge Authority, “told us that our band made a big impression on Mr. Roosevelt as he heard the gradual crescendo of the band, the breeze carrying the tones clearly to him,” Miss Engel wrote.

“He immediately asked whose band that was and Mr. Mitchell proudly replied that it was the Children’s Home Band of Jefferson County.”

Ten months later, their great adventure awaited.

A group of Jefferson County’s prominent residents organized as the Women’s Participation in the New York World’s Fair Committee decided they wanted to send the Children’s Home band. Their mission, they said, was to “advertise our county and show the types of future citizens our wards are becoming.”

The women’s group raised the funds — the trip would cost $1,011 — and on the morning of June 6, 1939, the children, along with six boys from St. Patrick’s Orphanage and chaperones, boarded two chartered Greyhound buses for a long drive to New York City.

Over the course of three days, the band played five times at different places on the World’s Fair grounds and marched twice. During one of the concerts, a telegram and two cases of an iced soft drink were delivered to the members, sent by “a spectator who appreciates the music.”

One of the chaperones, Carola C. Kimball, wife of supreme Court Justice Henry J. Kimball, reported that the director of the band competition mentioned to her that the Jefferson County band was the best junior band he’d seen perform and second best for all ages.

More than 100 bands participated.

The band members were given a tour of the city that included a show at Radio City Music Hall.

They were also the guests of three former Watertown men at their respective company displays at the fair: Edward Hungerford’s “Railroads on Parade,” Floyd L. Carlisle with Consolidated Edison (he was chairman of the board) and Frederick H. Babcock, a departmental manager hosting the General Electric display.

And they attended a tea hosted by some of New York City’s most prominent women, including Mrs. Vincent Astor and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt.

“I never saw such a fine reception as we were given in every place we were,” Mrs. Bunce told reporters upon their return to Watertown.

Two years later, the Children’s Home band was silenced. Mr. Lewis became ill, and on April 17, 1941, he died of pneumonia. He was 56. But his passing had little to do with the band’s swan song.

“After we had played someplace, Mrs. Bunce received a letter from New York state,” Mr. Parker said. “The state told her we had to disband because a state law prohibited children in public institutions being put on display.

“Mr. and Mrs. Bunce were really disappointed because that was their baby.”

The couple retired that year, in March. She was 59, and he 58.

“As for the kids, I don’t think it bothered us because that was one less thing we would have to do,” Mr. Parker said. “Being in the band was a duty. We would have preferred to be out playing, but looking back, it was a good thing. I can say I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t all enjoyment.

“But we did enjoy the trips.”

The band managed to perform that summer, playing at field days in Carthage, Cape Vincent and other communities, and at Thousand Island Park. The director for the short term was F. Lysle Schmid, owner of Schmid’s Music Store and a prominent local musician.

As the home’s new administrator found alternate activities for the young residents, interest in music waned, according to Mrs. Dempster. Traditionally, older children in the facility had taught the younger ones to play the instruments, she said, but when those former “teachers” went out into the world, the practice died out.

We compiled a list of 65 people who played in the Children’s Home Band, but found in Times files just four who are known to have continued their music.

■ John M. Gannon was a solo trumpeter and assistant band leader with the Children’s Home band.

He graduated from the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam, and after serving in World War II became music instructor and band director at Lisbon Central School. He later taught music at Harrisville Central School, where he was vice principal for several years.

Mr. Gannon retired as music teacher at Town of Webb Central School, Old Forge, in 1981. He died in December 2002.

■ Harland E. Flora, trumpet player and one-time student conductor of the Children’s Home band, graduated from the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester in 1941. He played in various bands and shows, including those of Guy Lombardo, Morey Amsterdam, the Lane Trio and Vernon and Irene Castle. He died in September 1963 in Salem, Mo.

■ Robert C. Wilson played trombone and became well known locally as a Dixieland musician. He was a vice president of the local musicians union. He died at age 60 in May 1986 in Cape Coral, Fla.

■ Arthur H. Parker, who owned a food distribution business, stayed with the clarinet. He played in an Army Air Corps band and later with a Veterans of Foreign Wars band and the Watertown Civic Band.

We thank Deborha O’Connor, development coordinator at the Children’s Home of Jefferson County, for providing information and photographs, and Times librarian Lisa Carr for research assistance.