Alumni News
Newsletter
Over 600 newsletters are mailed every year to alumni and supporters of the Cardinal Vanguard. Because of the growing number of alumni and supporters, the cost to mail the newsletter is climbing. This mailing costs over $300 to send when you include the cost to print the envelopes, labels and copying costs. And, because alumni and supporters are constantly moving, the addresses may not be accurate or up-to-date. In order to alleviate these mounting costs and inaccuracies, we would like to start sending these newsletters by e-mail for those alumni or supporters that would be interested. If you are interested in receiving the annual newsletter by e-mail in the future, please
send an e-mail (timrobichaux@cardinalvanguard.com)
with your name, the year you graduated (if an alumnus), and your e-mail address. I will then scratch your name off of the mailing list and send the newsletter to you over the internet. This would save a lot of time and money and would be greatly appreciated.
Support
Check out the calendar and support the Vanguard at every festival and performance that you can attend. Thanks.
All Those Trophies
Because of the huge success of the Cardinal Vanguard over the past 30 years, the number of awards and trophies had accumulated to an unmanageable number. To give you and idea of what I mean, the Cardinal Music program receives about 30 trophies every year. Multiply that number times 30 years and you can see that there is just not enough room to keep all of the trophies. Ellen Vicknair (1971) headed a project to resolve this issue, and there is now a process in place for the handling of all these trophies. Ellen did a great job in informing all of you about this, however, I thought that it would be a good idea to recap what was done with all of the trophies and update you on the current process to handle the trophies as the years go by.
Ellen first formed a team that met in the summer of 1999. We went through all of the trophies. We took out all of the trophies that had no identification on them. Most of these trophies did not have the year marked on them. Some of them did not identify what the award was for. Unfortunately, there were over 150 trophies that fell into this category. (We have implemented a process to make sure that all current trophies are labeled , and I will cover that later.)
The next thing that we did was to separate all of the trophies into their respective years. We carefully went through each year and chose from 1 to 5 trophies for each year that represented the successes of each respective year. These trophies were kept, and they are located in the band room.
At that point, Ellen notified all of the alumni in the fall of 1999 newsletter that the remaining trophies were up for adoption. On Sunday, November 14, 1999, the trophies were on display at the alumni social at the band room. All alumni and anyone interested in having one of these trophies free of charge were encouraged to go to the band room on that day. All of the trophies were displayed and Ellen took pictures of all of the trophies, and the trophies were also videotaped. (These pictures and the video are on display at the bandroom) A number of alumni and fans came out to the band room and "adopted" and took home some of these trophies. Some even made donations.
Once this was done, Ellen contacted Mary from Mary's Embroidery and asked her to come look at the remaining trophies(the trophies not kept or adopted)to see if any of the parts could be salvaged. We then dismantled each trophy taking off the nameplate and identification. All of these nameplates and plaques were kept and are on display in the band room. All of the salvageable parts were given to Mary's Embroidery in exchange for Mary's assistance in arranging the scrapbooks and dismantling the trophies. The remaining pieces of the trophies were discarded. It is important to note that even though the trophies were discarded, the plaques from each trophy were kept and can be viewed at any time. As you can see, this was a huge task, and I again thank Ellen for all of her hard work on this.
At the end of each year, the alumni committee chairperson will get with the band director to make sure that all trophies received for the current year are properly labeled with appropriate engraving.
The senior members of the Cardinal Music will choose from one to five trophies that represent the achievements of their senior year. All trophies will be kept for five years. In the fifth year, the trophies that were marked as keepers will be kept. The remaining trophies will be on display at the band room on the night of the yearly homecoming game. Anyone is free to view the trophies and adopt and take any trophy from that year that is not a keeper. Of course, donations will be accepted. The trophies that are not kept and are not adopted will be dismantled and discarded as noted above. All of the plaques from these trophies will be kept.
How You Can Help!
Of course, all alumni are welcome to help the band at any time. However, I am aware that most of you are not able to physically help the band for many different reasons.
There are two ways that you can help the Cardinal Music Department. The first one is by attending as many performance that you can. You can check the other areas of this web site for upcoming events and performances. The second way that you can help is by keeping the Cardinal Music Program in you thoughts and prayers. As always, they work very hard, and this is a wonderful organization.
Thanks and keep singing the praises of Cardinal Music!
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