THE PHOTO is grainy black and white, and worn at the edges, but there they are: the 1952 edition of Logan Square’s own Cavaliers, frozen in time, the pack of them clad in turnout T-shirts and street-tough smirks, crowding around the buses that will transport their collective dreams, from the sidewalk in front of Kosciuszko Post to the green field of Randall’s Island. Excitement shines in their young eyes, eager to be off. There’s Don Warren, young as any of them, waving goodbye from the top bus step. He’s carrying about 60 kids, carrying the trust of their mothers and fathers—his mother, too—that he’ll get them across five states, through the heart of the country’s biggest city and back again, after 1,600 miles, safe and sound.
And—oh, yeah—maybe knock those eastern corps down a peg or two in the process.
Before one of the corps’ early cross-country trips, Warren took a poll. How many had been that far from home before? No hands went up. OK. Who had been out of the state? Still no hands. Out of Chicago? A few. “All right, who’s been out of Logan Square?” Warren demanded. Giggles, smiles, every palm in the air. Drum corps had put the wheels under them to see parts of the country many of their parents had never visited. And leading the way were Warren, a week or so shy of his 24th birthday; teenage drum major Jarvis Fiedler; and pretty young plum Louise Bardos, who was still more peer and playmate than authority figure. “I can remember being thrown in the men’s shower,” she said.
It was at the armory where the Cavaliers rehearsed. The corps slept on the big stage at the front of the main room while Louise and traveling secretary Millie Magee kept house in the general’s office. Louise traveled as Millie’s companion, and helped take attendance, collect dues and shuttle the boys from station to station during competitions. On the New York trip she’d have run of the corps’ second bus. Back in the neighborhood, though, she was as much a chick as the adolescent roosters she minded.