Bluecoats Drum and Bugle Corps - History

History

The Bluecoats Drum and Bugle Corps was founded in 1972 by Canton businessman Art Drukenbrod and Canton Police officers "Babe" Stearn and Ralph McCauley, the director and assistant director of the Canton Police Boys' Club. The corps members chose the name both because of their sponsorship and to honor the city's police officers, particularly those who had retired from the ranks. The corps made its competition debut in 1974 and, in their first major show, finished thirty-second of thirty-seven corps in the U.S. Open Class A prelims in Marion, Ohio. The corps improved year by year, and began touring in both the U.S. and Canada and making U.S. Open finals in 1976, taking second place in 1977 and third in 1978. The Bluecoats made their first DCI appearance in Denver in 1977, scoring in thirty-fifth place among forty-five corps.

Although the Bluecoats corps was maturing musically, it was struggling to survive financially. 1979 saw the corps performing only in local parades, as it attempted to reorganize its financial situation. With the return to the field in 1980, the corps was competitive in Class A competitions but only managed a thirty-eighth place finish of the forty-four corps performing in Open Class at the DCI World Championships in Birmingham, Alabama. In the next two seasons, the corps attempted to compete exclusively in Open Class, but they met with small success. In 1983, it was announced that the Bluecoats Drum and Bugle Corps would cease operations.

At the time that the corps' folding was announced, present-day corps President Scott Swaldo was a marching member. When he told his father, Canton industrialist Ted Swaldo (now the corps' Director Emeritus), the elder Swaldo stated his determination to prevent it and stepped in to try to save the corps. One of Swaldo's first moves as corps director was to see that the organization was run like a business, a concept that has since been spread to numerous non-profit youth organizations around the country. With successful fund-raising projects and a solid business plan in place, the corps returned to the field after only a one year hiatus. As a full-fledged Open Class corps the Bluecoats improved with each passing year until, in 1987, the corps became the first corps from Ohio to earn a place in the DCI World Championship finals, finishing in eleventh place. Since then, the corps has failed to make DCI Finals only once, and the Bluecoats have become a consistent DCI contender, finishing as high as third place in 2010.

In the early days the corps traveled in blue-painted surplus Army buses, then in used school buses, later moving up to used, but air-conditioned, motor coaches. At first, meals were served from a U-Haul trailer towed by a parent's car, later from a van, then a travel trailer, before the eventual acquisition of an eighteen wheeled semi-trailer kitchen. Today the corps travels around the country during its summer tour in a convoy with buses, equipment truck, cook truck, souvenir truck, and staff vehicles.>