Greendale Band Students Take Service Trip to New Orleans

marching band students are back in class, having recovered from a twenty-three hour bus ride home from a trip to the southern United States.Seventy-two students along with eleven chaperones made the trip to New Orleans earlier this month.

They spent part of the trip working on a volunteer project called 'Rebuilding Together New Orleans' which involved fixing up homes that were still damaged six years after Hurricane Katrina. The students broke up into groups and went to work landscaping, painting, removing stumps, dismantling concrete and preparing security fences.

One of the homes in need of repair was a New Orleans residence built in 1897 and owned by Paul Baker, who was home at the time and treated the students to homemade jambalaya.  GHS band director Tom Reifenberg says meeting Baker provided students with a 'real face' to connect students to their volunteer work.

Another of the homes the students worked on is still in need of plumbing reconstruction before the homeowner Tom Thomas can move back in. A federal grant program that he was hoping would pay for the repairs was recently discontinued, so students are looking for ways to help Thomas raise the $11,000 needed to finish the necessary work.

GHS senior Carrie Staats, who is the band's clarinet section leader, said, "I appreciated that we did a service project because there is still a lot to be done with Katrina recovery all around Louisiana."

She went on to say she really enjoyed the trip because of all the history they got to see along with the food, the music and the Cajun/Creole culture.

Freshman saxophone player Shaadie Ali echoed her enthusiasm, saying, "The trip was quite an experience. The city of New Orleans has such a great atmosphere. Much of the French Quarter often feels the way the town's special brand of jazz does: sunny, warm, carefree and inviting."

In addition to the service project, students participated in a concert band clinic at Loyola University with Dr. Joseph Hebert. They also went sightseeing in New Orlean' s famous French Quarter and took a Mississippi riverboat cruise. While on the boat, they listened to the Grammy-nominated "Dukes of Dixieland" and met some celebrities who were along on the cruise including actress Olivia Wilde, actor Jake Gyllenhaal and the band "Mumford and Sons."

The students later traveled to Houston, Texas to watch the Milwaukee Brewers play a baseball game and visited NASA, where they were able to tour the Astronaut Training Facility and Mission Control.