History of John Smith Griffin
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High School 1926

During my senior year at high school they secured the services of a fellow named Hyrum Lamers to lead the band (this writing dated September 1952). Hy Lamers at one time played trombone with Susa's band (one of the great bands of the time). He was an excellent musician and had big ideas. He got everyone he could interested in the band and announced early in the year that we would participate in the national band contest. Hy meant what he said. We worked long and hard. The Rotary Club got busy and raised $10,000 to send us back to Fostoria, Ohio to compete in the National Band Contest. It was a very exciting experience and my first ride on a pullman train. We slept two in a berth and thought it was a little crowded but we managed. At Fostoria we were taken by families in the town and my roommate was (Casin?) Clark who is now Secretary of the Douglas Aircraft Corporation. The bands were judged on marching, orchestration, and playing selected concert peices. We won first place in marching but fell down on orchestration and finished third in the overall contest.

LETTERS
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(L260601) John Griffin to Mother

As a consideration for the Rotary Club raising money for us to go back to Fostoria, we agreed to play at the Rotary convention at Denver, Colorado on our way home and at Chicago going out. At Chicago we got off the train and marched from the station up to the broadcasting studio. We tied up traffic for blocks and I am sure that the Chicago cops were glad to see us leave town.

Two things greatly impressed me in Chicago. Right after our radio broadcast I was walking down the street and noticed a fellow lying on the sidewalk. A cop and a couple of people were standing nearby. The street was a busy one and hundreds of people walked by without pausing and merely looked at the fellow on the sidewalk. I never did know what was the matter with him but finally an ambulance came by and they loaded him in. It seemed so strange to me that people could walk by someone who was sick or injured and not even stop to see what the trouble was.

The other thing that impressed me was the Chicago slums, on the west side of Chicago. I had never seen such poverty and misery before in my life and I could hardly imagine that conditions so terrible could exist. I have been back to Chicago many times since my first visit and I still think that Chigago is a cold hard town, and is one in which I would not care to live.

An experience that I had at Fostoria, Ohio, where the band contest was held, is one that is unique in my lifetime up to the present. Fostoria was full of slot machines. The machines paid off in slugs, however, rather than nickles. The slugs were good for trade at certain stores in the town, principally theaters, candy shops and soda fountains. I remember that I played the machines and accumulated so many slugs that I did not know what td do with them. On the last day that the band was in town I took most of the band into a soda fountain and treated them in order to get rid of the slubs before leaving. It seemed that the more I played the machine the more slugs I accumulated, and the only way I could get rid of them was to spend them. This is something that I could never quite understand and something that has never happened to me since.

At Denver we stayed at the Fitzsimmons General Hospital. Being an R.O.T.C. band the army put us up at the hospital and we were fed army grub. It was my first taste of the army and I was not too impressed. In fact there were some of the boys that refused to eat the food that they served us and caused a lot of trouble. The trip with the band was my first time away from home. I was greatly impressed with the big cities and the bigness of the nation.

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