Pearl Harbor trip helps Furman Bands players connect with history and each other

Towering slabs of steel arced above the Furman Bands players as the echo of the Armed Forces Salute bounced off the hull of the USS Battleship Missouri.  

Furman Bands students played the Armed Services Salute and other songs near the USS Battleship Missouri at the Pearl Harbor National Memorial during their trip to Hawaii.

Just behind the band, in stark contrast with their Paladin-purple shirts, the brilliant white of the Pearl Harbor National Memorial signaled the spot where the USS Arizona was struck by bombs on Dec. 7, 1941, and where it still sits at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. 

The Furman Bands traveled to Hawaii from Jan. 4-11 to perform as part of the National Festival of the States, which celebrates school and university performance groups. Furman Bands Director Sue Samuels said she took another university band there in 2015, and she wanted to provide this once-in-a-lifetime experience for her current Furman students. 

“The kinds of bonds created through these shared experiences are invaluable,” Samuels said. “For a group that has to make music together, the better we know each other the better we can respond to one another while playing.” 

Before their performance at Pearl Harbor National Memorial, the students played for a crowd at Ala Moana Center, a shopping mall in Honolulu. The mall regularly hosts performances, so when the band took to the stage in the middle of a courtyard, shoppers gathered around the railings of the multi-story mall to watch and listen. 

More than a dozen Furman Bands students tried surfing for the first time during their trip to Hawaii, an experience that Director Sue Samuels said brought many of them closer together.

“The acoustics were good, Dr. Samuels was even surprised,” said MaryJo Mattingly ’28, a trombone player. “While I’m playing and looking around there’s just people everywhere. It was very informal, very fun.” 

There’s a lot of learning and growth that happens outside of instruction when traveling as a group, Samuels said. Normally the band is grouped by what section of instruments the students are in, but the trip gave them opportunities to mix and socialize outside of that tightly structured setting. During dinners and on the bus, musicians who had never chatted before in class were able to become fast friends more than 4,500 miles from their usual settings. 

“You develop a different sense of community and a new way to connect with those people,” Mattingly said. 

Several students took the opportunity to try surfing for the first time. A surf instructor offered a group class for the band members, and Mattingly was among about a dozen students who braved the waves. 

“I was tearing up as I watched them get this surf lesson in the Pacific Ocean and try something they’d never done before,” Samuels said. “They took chances and were supportive of each other throughout the whole trip.” 

The band’s trip to the Pearl Harbor National Memorial conjured waves of emotion as well. Students were able to reflect on the 1,032 names carved in marble at the memorial for the USS Arizona. Those who had relatives that served in the U.S. Navy were invited to participate in a flag-folding ceremony, and percussionist Charlie Gessner ’25 had the honor of reading the ceremony’s instructions aloud. 

There was time for reflection and contemplation at Pearl Harbor National Memorial, where several Furman Bands students shared they had relatives who had served in the U.S. Navy.

Gessner, who has been drum major for the marching band for two years, conducted the band during a few songs in their performance beside the Battleship Missouri. The students were joined by assistant professor Anastasia Christofakis on clarinet and assistant professor Buddy Deshler on trumpet. 

For Gessner, the trip was emblematic of what the band tries to do every day. 

“It’s about being part of something greater than yourself,” he said. “We want to have fun, and we always will find ways to have fun, but we want to create those emotional moments through music that you’re simply not able to replicate anywhere else.”