Recently, the Pride of Pampa Band received some really amazing news for the next school year, granting them quite literally the opportunity of a lifetime.
“We got invited to participate in a Vietnam Veteran’s Day parade in Hawaii for 2027,” said PHS Band Director Andrew Sedlacek. “They’re going to be able to march down the main street in Waikiki after performing with the Marine Band for God Bless America. And they will also have the opportunity to perform on the USS Missouri at Pearl Harbor.”
“This is one of those once in a lifetime opportunities that we’ve only been able to achieve because of so many years of success. They send out flyers to those schools who are consistently good in both marching performances and concerts, which we have been for the last decade.”
“We are working towards trying to get as many students as we can to be able to have this experience. Every couple of years we will take a trip out of state. We went to Washington D.C. a few years ago, and we’re going to Orlando tonight. It’s usually for groups of 20-30 students, and for a lot of them, this is the first that they’ve ever left the panhandle. A lot of them think of Amarillo as a big city and those buildings are skyscrapers. We actually have 12 students tonight who have never been on a plane before. We’re trying to get these kids the experience of being outside of Pampa, getting them out of what they think is normal and seeing the world on a larger scale.”
This amazing opportunity is one that Andrew, Ryan Bradley and Tim Johnson of the Pampa Band Booster Club have their hearts set on, and although the trip isn’t set until the next school year, they’re already in the works on how to cover the costs to bring more kids along for the journey.
“Unfortunately the cost of travel and housing are the two big expenses. This year just going to Disney, two-thirds of the cost is travel and housing. So we’re looking at having to drop the smaller trips we take in order to raise money over a couple of years for the big ones and have more students be able to go. We would love to have as many students as possible to have this opportunity, to see and experience things that they can’t here in Pampa,” Andrew said.
“Every year our band gets invited to large events and they get invited because they are great and successful,” Ryan said. “But we don’t generally do this kind of thing because of finances and timing.”
“My daughter will be a third generation Pampa High School Band Student and my mother got to go to Ireland. These are the things that every other generation has the opportunity to experience. When Andrew came up and told us about this, the Booster Club was unanimously 100% behind it.”
The estimated cost per student is roughly around $1,000 per student for the flight and about $1,800 for the trip itself, totalling around $2,800 each student will have to come up with to be able to go, and that’s with the Booster Club covering the cost of stowing the instruments. Half of the total cost is required to be turned in by December of this year, while the other is due around late winter or early spring.
“We have now come to this realization that we need to figure out how to get $100,000 in a year so we can at least take a good chunk of that burden off the students so it helps them get there,” Ryan said. “We want to do the logistics cost of it as well as start paying off all of their flights. Anything we come up with after paying the costs of the instruments will then be distributed evenly among all the kids to start bringing their costs down. Every dollar we start raising now will help the kids get there.”
The Pampa Band Booster Club has fundraisers throughout the year, including the March-a-thon, the chocolate bar sale, and the biggest one that will make its yearly appearance in just a few months, the Pride of Pampa Band Carnival. And while those fundraisers tend to be successful, Andrew and the Booster Club have until December to come up with $100,000 for every band student to be able to go.
One of the ideas they have had is forming partnerships with Pampa’s many businesses, individuals and organizations to ‘adopt a band student’, putting forth a chunk of change for any student to go on this remarkable trip.
“If we can start engaging with the community and having them start helping now, then the earlier we can get our funding in and the students have a more realistic expectation of how much funding they need to get to. The last thing we want to do is put a big bill in front of them that they or their parents back away from and miss the opportunity. No matter how much we raise and how much we offset, I don’t doubt there’s going to be a handful of students who are going to have to have that conversation and have that concern, but I also don’t doubt there won’t be people in our community who won’t help pick them up,” Ryan said.
“We have a very giving community,” Tim said. “If they know the needs, they always help out. We wouldn’t want someone to not have this opportunity because of funding. We want to try to make sure this is available to every band student that is interested. That’s the key takeaway: whatever we have to do as a community, as booster, as directors, as citizens, to give these kids the opportunity, because for many of them, this will be their once in a lifetime.”
This year, the Booster Club will be registering for the annual Panhandle Gives event in November that amplifies all donations made during that time, and while they appreciate donations and participation in their fundraisers throughout the year, the best time to donate monetarily is during Panhandle Gives.
All of us here at The Pampa News is excited for these hardworking and dedicated kids, and we will be sure to remind you, our readers, about how you can help give to this fantastic cause as events and opportunities become available.
For more information about the trip and what you can do to help, contact Ryan Bradley or Tim Johnson through the Pampa Band Booster Club.
