The Knights Drum and Bugle Corps

I’ve received news from the Neuleibs. Here’s the email:

“Wanted to let people know that Paul Hoogerwerf “Hoogie” just received a liver transplant last week. He is doing well. His address for cards is Paul Hoogerwerf, 1707 Ravine Park Lane, Aurora, IL 60504″

“Also, we are having another Reunion Committee meeting on March 4th. Reservations are arriving but we need to pick up the pace as we have to give the Holiday Inn an approximate number by APRIL 1. (no fooling) We have been doing internet searches and sending out info like crazy. Many alums are still not on our list. We are thinking of people everyday, some even in Geneseo, who are not listed. If everyone thinks of a couple people they marched with or traveled with (support staff) they should email us with names and we’ll do out best to find them. Wow, are we getting some good memorabilia. Bob Kruse just gave us 4 boxes of stuff including scrapbooks from many years between the late 70’s to early 90’s. Of course we have his slides for the audio/visual show. (We still need more pics from the Kewanee years for that too) We have an old Kewanee bass drum head and we have the Round Table Scroll. And of course DJ has a bunch of good stuff.”

Sounds good to me….by the way, it’s 143 days until the reunion (from the time of posting), so if you haven’t made travel plans and hotel arrangements, better get on that.

I hope to see you all there.

I have created a new discussion forum for people to talk about news, memories, stories, plans, etc. It’s located at http://groups.google.com/group/knightscorps. I’ll see about getting the link posted on the left side of the page with the other stuff, keep an eye out for it. I have started a couple of topics for people to discuss, one if which is memories and stories about Dave Benson. Feel free to post, discuss, and remember.

On another note, our Frappr Map is up to 51 members in 19 different states. If you haven’t posted your location, sign up and let us know where you are. Go here to check it out – http://www.frappr.com/theknights

From Keith Johnson:

“Funeral arrangements for Dave have been made.

The wake will be this Sunday (1/22) at Sunset Hill Funeral Home (www.sunsethillcemetery.com) in Glen Carbon, IL from 5:00-8:00 PM. Burial will be on the following Monday at 10:30.

Dave is survived by his wife Julie, his 4 yr old daughter and 1 yr old son. I’m sorry but I can’t remember the children’s names right now.

Several people have asked about an address to send condolensces. Their address is 1904 Butler Blvd, Edwardsville, IL 62025.

In lieu of flowers, the family has requested that donations be made for the childrens education fund.

I can’t adequately express my sorrow and can only hope that Dave’s family finds a way to overcome this tragedy.

Julie didn’t meet Dave until after his years in drum corps were behind him. I think it would be wonderful if those of us who knew him could drop her a note so she could have some small comfort in knowing how he touched our lives.

Please keep the family in your prayers!”

And then later:

“The childrens’s names are Jackie and Daniel.

There is a very nice obituary at the following link http://www.legacy.com/Belleville/Obituaries.asp?Page=Lifestory&PersonId=16402369”

Real quick posting, I just got word (throught the guestbook) that Dave Benson (aka Abe) was killed in a traffic accident this morning (1/19) about 7:00 AM on Hwy I-270 near St. Louis. I’ll post more information as soon as it is received.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family.

I hope everyone is having a good holiday season so far. I just received some new information from the Reunion planning committee. They sent out a mailing to all the addresses that they had with all the info about the reunion. If you didn’t receive your info yet, click here to download the mailing in MS Word format or Adobe PDF format. Fill it out and send it in as soon as you can. All this information can also be found at the official Reunion page. And as always, keep checking the website for Reunion news and updates.

The Knights Frappr Map is up to 38 people now, mostly in the central and northern Illinois area and eastern Iowa, but there seems to be a pattern lining up along the US border with Mexico. Are the Knights secretly forming their own border patrol?

Hope everyone has a Merry Christmahanakwanzaka. Don’t go eatin’ too many cookies, we got a reunion coming up.

And the Knights Frappr Map increases to 34 people as of this posting. Got some news for you all, first off, minor update to the Repertoires page, updated info from the 1990 season. Got an email from Gregg Neuleib saying that most of you should be receiveing a mailing about the reunion shortly. Dan Potter has agreed to MC the banquet and Roman Blenski has agreed to be a speaker. They are currently finalizing another potential speaker. Everyone make plans for it and keep an eye on the Reunion page for more info when I recieve it.

Also, as some of you may be aware, blogs have recently taken off pretty popularly. For those of you who don’t know, blog is short for weblog, essentially a way of posting regular updates on a website, but also being able to distribute them through something called an RSS feed. Please let me know if this is of any interest to you guys by submitting your answer to this poll.

Knights Poll
Would you be interested in a RSS feed for the website postings and updates?
Yes
No
What?

view results

Thank you for your input.

Hey, we’re getting a good amount of people on the Knights Frappr Map. We’re up to 20 now. For those of you who don’t know, Frappr uses Google maps to put pins where the people are who submit their info. It lets you see where Knights are currently located. Obviously, Eastern Iowa and Northern Illinois are the most popular locations for Knights, but we’ve got a couple in California, a couple in Colorado, and a few scattered elsewhere (I’m hoping Val Ebel will register sometime so we’ll have one in Azerbaijan). If you’re not on the map, go to the above link and scroll down till you get to the “Add Yourself” section, then put in your info. Add a photo if you like as well.

I hope everyone is having a good beginning of the holiday season. As most of us in Iowa and Illinois know, it just got cold in the last day, and most of us got our first round of snow yesterday or today.

I’m looking at moving the website over to a new hosting service, but I can’t decide if I should yet. My reason is that the new host gives me an easy way to do a sortable, searchable database for the email list, so it’ll be much easier to look through if you’re looking for a specific group of people. The down side is that it’s a bit more expensive. If anyone has any input or better ideas, please email me.

Three things for you all this time around.

Item 1: Anyone heard of Frappr. It’s a website where you can put in your location and it’ll put in points where you are. You can see where other people are. Anyway, I’ve created a group for Knights alumni at http://www.frappr.com/theknights. Just go there, scroll down below the map to the add yourself section, put in your name, zip code, a shoutout (I put when I marched and what I do), and if you want to attach a current photo of yourself. Just kinda a fun thing to look at and be able to see where all the Knights are.

Item 2: I don’t know what the problem is with the Forum. I think it’s been down for a while now, but I just noticed it. I’ll have to figure something else out, but for now, I’ve removed the link because it doesn’t work anyway.

Item 3: Tom Huntley asked me to mention this:
“Also if you could mention the Gulf Coast Sound in your next update. We are a senior corps from Texas and looking at our 3rd field season. We plan on marching 36 horns this year and picking up where the Knights left off, we are doing Rock Music. Last year we played Evenessence and Kansas. This year is The Bangles, Emerson Lake and Palmer and Cindy Laupers version of Unchained Melody. Show should rock.” There ya go folks, if you’re in the Texas area, and want to relive the old days, check it out.

Also, I’ve heard rumors of a senior corps starting in the Quad Cities. If I find out anything else, I’ll let you know. At this point, just rumors.

Just updated a bunch of email addresses, locations and other information on the email page, so everyone can keep an eye out for that.

Another reminder for those who might not have done this yet, everyone needs to go to the reunion page for info about next year’s big reunion and to submit your information to the reunion committee.

I also created an Old News page, to put all the info from this page once it’s outgrown the front page. The official link to this will be at the bottom of the page. If you haven’t stopped by in a while, or it’s your first time at the site, stop by Old News to find out what’s happened while you were away. I know that a lot of posts have been missed, but I’m finding what I can to put up there.

I just recieved this information from Gregg Neuleib:

“Don Croegaert, “UNCLE DON”, passed away Tuesday, Oct. 11. The funeral is Friday at 10:30 am at St Malachy’s Church in Geneseo. Visitation 6-8 Thurs. at Vandemore Funeral Home Geneseo. Memorials to the Donald Croegaert Memorial Fund. Condolences to family at www.vandemorefuneralhome.com. I wish I knew more and could have let people know sooner but according to the paper he died at the emergency room on Tues. I saw him about 3 weeks ago and he was fine. Another sad loss to the Knights family.”