After 83 years, Rohrersville's music man bids the band farewell

ROHRERSVILLE — When Richard Haynes joined the storied Rohrersville Band, Franklin Roosevelt was president.

There's never been a time since when he wasn't a member of the band, and for more than four decades, he was its director.

But at age 97, Haynes is preparing to play this week in what might be his last appearance with the band.

The Rohrersville Band will play its spring concert at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Band Hall on Rohrersville's Main Street. The band is marking its 185th anniversary this year, and for  83 of those years, Richard Haynes has been there — directing or playing his cornet, or both.

He's also been the group's historian, writing a comprehensive chronicle of the band's development since its founding as the "Rohrersville Cornet Band" in 1837 — called, appropriately, "The Band Played On."

"I never really thought about quitting," he told Herald-Mail Media this week.

Musical roots

Haynes remembers singing with his father and brothers as his mother played a pump-organ in the family parlor when he was growing up.

"We sang four-part harmony," he said.

He also remembers the parlor was a room in the house that "didn't get heated; you only went in there at certain times."

Even so, the Haynes men honed their craft and even sang publicly a time or two.

Haynes briefly took voice lessons while he was a student at Boonsboro High School.

"But then I got the lead in the operetta at the high school, and so I had to quit taking voice lessons to take the time" to sing in the operetta.

A dairy farmer, Haynes also worked for the Boonsboro Post Office during his adult years. But music was always an avocation. His father, brothers and both his children played in the Rohrersville Band at various times.

From 1960 to 2004, Haynes directed the band. Seven years before becoming the band's director, he'd begun directing the choir at Rohrersville's Bethel Church — and kept meticulous notes of every anthem the choir performed.

A milestone: 200 years, unwavering faith: Rohrersville's Bethel UMC begins its third century

More about Richard: Rohrersville's past is present for Richard Haynes

He also sang with the Cumberland Valley Choristers, who at one point performed a piece that was dedicated to the group but "was a horrible piece, I thought," he said.

The Rohrersville Band traveled all around the region, performing for festivals, picnics and parades. In his history of the band, Haynes recalls that it was banned for about 15 years from playing at the Blair's Valley Church of God's annual picnics after performing "The Beer Barrel Polka" — twice — during a church picnic in the early '40s.

And then there was that time in Keedysville when the late muppeteer Jim Henson was in the audience. And when the band had to pause for a while during a 1978 appearance at Beaver Creek School because its "Star-Spangled Banner" was interfering with the wedding march being played for the ceremony at the Lutheran church next door.

But there were moments that were memorable for other reasons. The band played in a parade in Hagerstown during the 1961 visit from former President Dwight Eisenhower (there were thunderstorms and long discussions about whether band members should wear coats, he said).

"On South Potomac Street somewhere, we pulled off on a porch a time or two because the rain was so bad."

The Daily Mail reported that "thousands braved a heavy thunderstorm that soaked part of the units of a parade that passed the reviewing stand and continued to Rose Hill Cemetery where Gen. Eisenhower rededicated the ground where more than 2,500 Confederate dead are buried."

"I remember going on down into the Rose Hill Cemetery, the Confederate area there, and hearing Ike talk there," Haynes said.

He was still directing the band when it returned to Rose Hill in 1992 for the re-interment of two Confederate soldiers killed in the Battle of Antietam 130 years before.

"It was one of the things that left an impression on me more than most anything we did," he said. "It still affects me."

A living legacy

Haynes calculates that he has marched with the band during Sharpsburg's annual Memorial Day parade more than 60 times.

In fact, recalls the Rev. John Schildt — a historian in his own right and pastor of Bethel Church — the National Park Service recognized Haynes for having participated in a record number of musical programs commemorating the battle.

Former U.S. Rep. John Delaney, D-6th, recognized him, too. Haynes wrote in an addendum to his history that at the time, he thought Delaney "had the charisma and intelligence to be President" after the congressman announced in 2017 that he planned to run in 2020.

And on his 95th birthday, occurring during the initial COVID-19 lockdowns, band members surprised him by assembling on his daughter's lawn for a serenade. And Schildt wrote him a poem, noting that "God gave him a gentle spirit, a caring personality, and a gift of music."

Haynes insists that Sunday's program will most likely be his last. Marching, even climbing up into the trolley that ferries the band through the Sharpsburg parade, has become too much of a challenge.

And from all those years of playing and leading the band, he never really had a favorite tune, he insists.

"I never had much in the way of favorites, I felt," he said. (Although Schildt notes that the choir sang "My God and I" with some frequency while Haynes was directing.)

But whether there was a favorite, and whether it was the band or one of the choirs, for Richard Haynes there was always, always, music.

"I can't imagine how life would have been without music," he said.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Richard Haynes to end 83-year association with Rohrersville Band