This past December 27, the University of Arizona played Purdue University in the Foster Farms Bowl in Santa Clara, California. My nephew, Chris, plays tuba in the University of Arizona marching band. About 50 of the band members including Chris departed from Phoenix for Santa Clara on Christmas Day. They needed to play at a pep rally on the next morning at 11:00am. The other 150-175 members of the band were to depart from Tucson around 5:00 am so they could arrive at Santa Clara in time for the pep rally. All the band staff and the large instruments such as tubas and drumline were on this flight as well. Unfortunately, there were technical issues with the flight which meant that this group would not make it to the pep rally. Not having a drumline is a huge problem for a marching band because they’re one of the ways that the band keeps the tempo and they also start off all the tunes with a roll-off. So, not having a drumline caused quite a panic among the band members who were there. According to Chris, here’s what happened next: “Fortunately, members of the Purdue ‘All American Marching Band’ drumline came to our aid and played with us so that we weren’t totally useless at the pep rally. They played our fight songs and some other tunes that we normally do. The cool part was that this was music that they had never even seen or played before, and they didn’t have any music to read either. Since our drumline captain was there, he talked them through what to do. All in all, they ended up doing a fantastic job, and we were able to play our stuff and have a blast at the pep rally.” What a wonderful gesture on the part of the Purdue drumline.