The experince I had in my short time there, gave the strenght to take on the world. I was a lost soul when interduced to the family. But I was taken in and accepted. I just remember the dedication and the hard work. All of the wins during the summer tour and the "bus rides"!!!
- Dawn Renee (Rabish) Spear

Hanging and playing music with buds Teddy Chagoya, Mike Isaman, Gerardo Flores, and all the color guard girls!
- Rollie Arbolante

Loved the weekend camps!
- Annelise McCreery Martinez

Let's see, going swimming with "the staff" while the band slept. A bus break down at 12am, switching busses, getting in at 3am, waking up at 6am to paint the field with swarms of knee-high bugs, that was pretty intense. ('94)

Every band winning at their homeshow in 94 I believe. That was some good judging, hehe.

Watching Dave Watrous vault over a log in hand-made leather mokasins, jeans and a tie-dye T-shirt as he approached the other DMs to receive awards (91).

I think 1990 was the most amazing year for me (my rookie year). Mr. Hawkins (sorry old habits die hard) had come back, there was a wide range of diversity in every sense, and the sax line had that amazing riff in Frankenstein. I remember coming late to my the first band camp with a Taco-Bell cup. I remember our homeshow, which we won! I remember the phone call a month or so after finals when Brad asked me to try out for assistant DM. Changed my life.
- Tue Rust

Gummy bears on the windows of the bus! West Edmonton Mall....Tigers and sharks and rides Oh MY! "96!" oops that's right they gave us over 100...!!?
Good people, good friends, teamwork and hard work!
- "KC" Kathy Crawford a.k.a. Casey Crawford

Fun trip to Canada. Playing at the King Dome was great, unfortunately, the King Dome is now gone..
- Melinda (Reschke) Davis

I loved the 40s show and dancing with my favorite horn player, Jason. Every time I hear 20th Century Fox's opening music I think of band days. What fun. Tracy Tree Branch where are you? What are you doing? Jolly Ched.
- Joelle (Phillips) Baranowski

Such great music, such great friends, such great FUN!!
- Kathy (Jost) Benson

On a trip to Disneyland with Spirit, I became quite ill. I thought I had the flu, but Mr. Hawkins took me to the hospital as a precautionary measure. It turned out that I had appendicitis! I had surgery in the middle of the night in Fontana, CA, and missed YBI! The fondest memory of this whole ordeal was that many of the band members and staff made a tape recording with special messages and well wishes for me. Their thoughtfulness turned a pretty horrific experience into one of the nicest memories I have of Spirit.
- Kelly (Fueger) McAlister

Band camps at Peterson; being reprimanded for "fooling around"; the amazing trip to Seattle & Vancouver; Mr. Hawkins; being in the low brass--what a great group of guys!
- Susanna (Susy Wallace) Porter

Who could forget Animal? Who could forget switching out those ugly red and white uniforms?Who could ever forget the first ever Portland trip? Who invented liquid soap and why? Wheres that pizza that I ordered?
- Kevin HIll

I had fun and learned alot from the whole experience
- Ashley Donaldson

I will never forget the first practice that judy and shannon took me to... South Pacific. i knew the musical already and was amazed at how friendly everyone was; this was the beginning of my social life!! i marched two memorable seasons, and this was the basis for some of my deepest and most cherished friendships. not only that, spirit introduced me to drum corps and prepared me to march with santa clara vanguard (89-91). so many of you i have fallen out of touch with... i would love to hear from you again :) HAPPY CLUB!!
- Maria Romera

The Morselettes! Anyone remember? = )
- Michelle Beyda-Scott

Just that it started in spirit where I did not even know what a drum was which led me to end up in the SCV and then Bluedevils snarelines.....looking back it was fun...would have done a few things different but now as time goes by......i wish i had taken the time to really enjoy the experience.....hope the spirit comes back someday.
- David Walters

Hi folks. I was in Spirit for just the year with the 40's show (1985 I think), and although I never threw myself into it, I loved the music. Since I was only slightly involved in Spirit, I don't have much to say that will be relevant to ya'll--the reason I'm writing is mostly just to express my gratitude for the experience of being in Spirit. I still have tapes of some shows and listen to them occasionally just as I'd listen to anything else. I'm sure my friends think I'm weird when they stop by and I have marching band music playing.

The first time I heard Spirit, I think Brent Nelson had brought me to an event to try enlisting me. On the way to the event I had no interest whatsoever, but dag nabbit there isn't a human being alive who could resist after the previous year's band played Jerusalem.

My story to share: Partway through the year after joining Spirit, my grades at Sunnyvale Junior High were waning. My mom contacted Brad Hawkins to say she was considering pulling me out of Spirit and Mr. Hawkins invited her to a practice where she could see the band and discuss my options. After seeing the band practice that day, she came home thinking about pulling me out of school for the year to avoid impacting my performance in Spirit.

Finally, the one thing I really want to say is thank you to Brad Hawkins. I hope you realize what a wonderful and influential experience you created, multiplied across hundreds of lives.
- Brent Miller

Waking up during band camp on a saturday finding out how allergic to poison oak I was :(
- Ben Nunes

A few memories for you...
1986 - Expo 86...one really short parade and then two free days there! Also...Mavericks going to Taco Bell instead of staying at the standstill competition...beating all the drum corps (Cavaliers, Suncoast Sound, Troopers) in High Brass

1986 & 1987 - Burns, Wyoming and the millions of roaches...everywhere you stepped, you heard Crunch! Crunch! Crunch! One year was bad enough there, but we went back for a second year...must have been REALLY cheap housing! Also in 1987...the perennial last-place Clarinet section winning the first Sectional Drill competition, shocking the rest of the band!

1988 - Start of the season...the show theme was to be Phantom of the Opera...shortly after, Brad left, John Steinwinder became director, and the show theme became Dvorak's 9th Symphony.

1989 - Rodeo performance in Canada...only three people in the stands...I can understand performing at these places for visibility, but there were only three people there!

1990 - Start of the season...membership dropped from 44 to 14 people...John Steinwinder was back again as director after Jeff Pearson resigned, and the show theme was Beethoven's 5th Symphony...we only had a few rehearsals of the first movement in December and January, then it looked like Spirit was going to fold...shortly after, John left, Brad became director again...the rest of the season can only be described as "The Second Coming" of Spirit...membership grew from 14 to 70 members, and the show theme changed to the 10th Anniversary show with "March of the Second Coming" as the opener! Too appropriate given the circumstances! The vast majority of members who joined that season stayed in Spirit and membership increased to around 100 people for the 1991 and 1992 seasons.

1991 - Seattle Seafair parade...one really long parade that went right through the Kingdome...we marched across the whole field as many thousands of people in the stands cheered!

1992 - Final rehearsal and show...final rehearsal at Mt. Rainier...the vast majority of the band did that final rehearsal in the underwear, somewhat reminiscent of years before where everybody would put on as many clothes as they could for the final rehearsal. Final show...great final performance, then after the show, Spirit and Sound Machine did a combined standstill performance. The two bands were intermixed, with Spirit and Sound Machine members standing side by side. They performed their show, then we performed our show, then I think we did some combined playing. A great memory for my final performance with Spirit.
- Mickey Helms

I joined Spirit of Sunnyvale in 1994 because Todd Oliver could talk of nothing else so I had to see what the fuss was all about. Needless to say, I was hooked. I was a member of Spirit until it folded in mid-1998. It was a very big part of my life and because of the time and effort that the staff spent teaching me how to march, I probably wouldn’t have survived high school marching band.

These are just a couple of things that I remember about my experiences in the organization. I got my first and worst of many bad sunburns at the Memorial Day Camp in '94 (thank you to Betsy for all of the Noxema cream and Aloe); going to Knott’s Berry Farm and bringing back a stuffed animal named Roscoe; Elmo hanging barney up by a noose in the baggage compartment of the bus; Betsy saving our necks in ’95 by becoming our very last minute drum major; the woodwind section never getting along; Shawn’s foot tapping in unbelief as my hair was falling into a garbage can the night before we left Colorado; and being the only band with no drum major and no color guard for two years in a row and still kicking butt!

As of now, I am currently attending West Valley Community College in Saratoga and studying to become a court reporter. My goal is to hopefully have an AS Degree in court reporting in the next six years. I have no job at the moment, like many other people, though not for lack of trying to find one. I don’t really see very many Spirit people these days, except for Todd and some various other people at local DCI shows. Thanks for all of the good times and great memories.
- LizBeth Jenson

Do you remember in 84 when somebody kept writing these anonymous poems and putting them on a bulletin board or something and Hawkins would read them to us? I think it was somewhere in Canada that we stayed for a couple of days that had a hockey rink.
- Thor John Strombom

Dean, I would like to say I am sorry for duc tapping you to the floor. It was really funny at the time. I do remember having to march in place for a long along with my fellow drum line friends at some odd hour of the night. Brad was really ticked off. I know the drum line has pulled many more pranks than this one.
Anyone from the drum line like to share some of their pranks?
- Stoney Meagher

1992-93
I would like to add some info about 1992. We started off the season in 2nd place. At our 4th show in Stockton Ca, we went down to third place and remained there all season long. My favorite performance of the year was in Kelso/Longview Wa, when it poured and poured during our performance. Everybody's senses were heightened as they focused on not slipping on the astroturf field we were playing on. I believe our final score for the year was around 87.

Here is the staff as I remember it.
Director: Rich Alipaz
Percussion Staff: Dave Sankus, Jonathan Pantoja, Arlene Kayuga.
Music & Marching: Gary Butera, John Meng, Mario Blandini.

We had 86 members that year.

The band pulled off one hell of a performance at finals, to the point where the drumline was quietly cheering a "smoked" performance during the march off. At finals, the entire drumline had "Blue Devils" shirts on underneath our uniforms. Percussion director Dave Sankus said "It must be the shirts" after the show, remarking on how the drumline was solid and precise in it's performance at finals. After the show, Soundmachine did a concert for us, and we did a concert for them. At one camp in Oregon, we shared the same facility with The Imperials. They were in the gym next door to us. It was pretty strange having a competing bacnd right in the same building, and the now top 12 contendor Seattle Cascades were staying right across the street from us. On our return from tour 1 the bus carrying half the band broke down on the California side of the California / Oregon border. It took almost 4 hours for another bus to get to us.

That's about all I can call, er um, I mean Total Recall.
- Tim Foley

The times we had long road trips and everyone wanted to be on BUS #2. Colorguards RULE!
- Claire (Ramos) Garcia

I'll never forget practicing in Rainier WA in 1992 and watching the video that the staff made from the judges box. You could see us down on the fiels and Mt Rainier in the background. It was HUGE. We were very close to it. I also remember Mario Blandini saying that he wanted to hear us play so loud that we would blow the top off of the Mountain. That was also the site where we did our final run through for the 1992 season.
- Tim Foley