Plainfield East Band Boosters Raise Money with Carbs

Emily Dole, Plainfield East High School's first drum major, doesn't have an after-school job.

"Band is my job," said Emily, 17, speaking at the Band Booster's Third Annual pasta Monday night.

Band members survived sunrise-to-sunset practices all summer. They're at it until long after dark during the school year.

"This year we're going to be in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, so we have to practice extra hard," said Emily, a tuba player.

For Claude Maurice Bond Jr., who co-leads the band as drum major with Emily, music runs in the family. Bond plays the tuba, the trumpet, the French horn…

"Why don't you tell her what you don't play?" asked his aunt Christi Smith, as I struggled to scribble the list. Smith, who played the same low bass family of instruments, went to college on a music scholarship.

Band members teamed up with the National Honor Society and student council to serve up dinner. Band made the pasta and the brainiacs topped it off with ice cream sundaes.

Freshman Phillip Arrington, 14, a bass clarinet and symbols player, said traveling with friends in the band is what makes the music play for him.

Across the room, seniors Amber Arvin and Karen Olixeros, both 17, were crooning karaoke. They were belting out Shania Twain's "Feel Like a Woman."

This duet of chorus members came out to support their buddies in the band. What's a singer without a back-up band?

But, why were they in their PJ's?

"It's homecoming week and Monday of homecoming week is Pajama Day," said science teacher Eileen Corcoran, who proved she is a good sport by supping in her silk bath robe.

Is this in your job description? I wanted to know.