Pride Sleigh Ride (1989)

Mel Penn, second from left, at Homecoming 2008 with six other Pride of Oklahoma drum majors

Coach broke the bad news on our mailing list yesterday that beloved alumnus Mel Penn had succumbed to his long battle with cancer. From Coach’s message:

Mel was my first drum major after arriving in Norman in 1971. I have considered him a true friend over the years and he will be missed by the entire Band Alumni. Let me share with you some of the sentiments sent out to the Pride this morning by Brian Britt, which reflect my feelings as well.

“Mel was an enthusiastic and inspirational leader as a Drum Major for the the Pride and for the OU Alumni Band as well. In a very real sense, Mel Penn was “Mr. Pride of Oklahoma.” He established the “Strut” that has become a defining visual symbol of our organization, but more importantly it is the man that Mel was that permeates who we have become as a band. Mel’s work ethic, enthusiasm, and love for OU and the Pride knew no bounds. His contributions to the University and the Pride were at the highest level and serve as a model to all who knew him. A positive difference maker for all who met him, Mel has left a profoundly positive and indelible mark on our organization and will be missed by all who knew him.”

The Norman Transcript has more today:

A University of Oklahoma alumnus and longtime OU ambassador, well known for mentoring business students and a lengthy succession of Pride of Oklahoma drum majors, died Tuesday night.

… Penn earned his bachelor’s and master’s of business administration degrees in 1972 and 1976 from OU and tallied a nearly 25-year career in business, mostly with Kerr-McGee Corp.

Penn, who had been battling cancer until his death, returned to OU in 1997 as the first director of the business college’s Student Support Center, which provides OU MBA students with mentoring, career planning and corporate development services.

“Not only did (Mel) work on assisting students in job placement, but he was vital to the overall MBA professional development experience,” said OU Price College of Business Dean Kenneth Evans. “He will be sorely missed by students, corporate recruiters, alumni and the faculty and staff of the college.”

Penn is credited with helping establish the Price Scholars program, which provides summer internships in New York with Wall Street firms and corporate headquarters, along with classes at New York University’s school of business, for select MBA students.

… Along with his duties in the business college, Penn was chairman of the Price College Alumni Association.

As a former drum major and graduate assistant to the OU Pride of Oklahoma Marching Band, he has been a mentor to every Pride drum major since he graduated.

“Mel Penn has been an inspiring mentor for countless of students, not only in the college of business, but all across the campus,” OU President David Boren said. “The OU family has lost one of its most generous and devoted members.”

A celebration of Mel’s life and spirit is to be held Monday, February 21, at 2:00 PM in the sanctuary of McFarlin Memorial United Methodist Church in Norman, under the auspices of Primrose Funeral Service. If you wish to send your sympathy to Betsy, you can write to:

Monday night brings the long-scheduled first Wind Symphony concert of the semester, if you want to stay in town and spend more time connected to the program. I’ll post details about that this weekend.

The online guest book entry for Mel’s services can be found here. You can even call a toll-free number and record an audio message for the guest book if you wish.

We have some exciting news and ways you can continue your legacy with the Pride and help others at the same time.

I hope that you will consider joining the Pride Patrons. The Patrons will be an affinity group designed for anyone who loves The Pride, wants to become more closely involved with its activities and who would like to offer their financial support to support the good works of its members. For those that join in 2009-10, you will be charter members. The yearly dues are $100. More information is available here in PDF format.

I also hope that you will consider endowing a position (or section) in perpetuity in the Pride. Our goal is to endow the entire Pride so that the legacy will continue and ensure that it continues to be the very best organization of its kind in the nation! These sponsorships will cover uniforms, instruments, equipment and a scholarship for each Pride member. For a limited time, a financial match is available. These endowments start at $15,000, and they can be payable in many different ways. A full explanation of the opportunities is on our Web site here, again in PDF format.

Contact me if you have any questions! My days in the Pride were my best memory of OU, and I am grateful every day for that experience. I hope you will join me in helping others have that same kind of experience in the years to come.

Live On University,

Karen

Nonetheless, two years ago, we had a home game on November 1, the day after Halloween, and a night game at that. The Pride responded with a timely show that got more applause than The Noble Men (and Women) of Kyle—The Pulse of the Spirit of Aggieland Nationally Famous Fightin’ Texas Aggie Marching Band, ending with a great classic pop song. It was so popular that the members voted to repeat it for that year’s bowl performance.

With the recent death of Michael Jackson, I’m sure members of the 2007 Pride and those familiar with the show have thought about it. Jackson’s music has been everywhere since June 25, and I simply cannot hear or see any part of Thriller now without thinking of that night on Owen Field. You can click here to see videos of the performance on YouTube.

Have you figured out the equation yet?

This week, Mr. Britt informed us that with Homecoming 2009 taking place on Halloween itself, the game’s halftime show will end with a joint Pride of Oklahoma and Alumni Band performance of Thriller. Both bands together, on the field, doing…

…well, doing Thriller things. I’m not going to try to predict what any part of it may look like, but you can watch the videos from last time to get a good idea of why this was so much fun. Some of you reading this know because you performed it in 2007. If your time in the Pride has ended, come back for Homecoming this year and perform it again!

This is going to be a lot of fun.

The Sooners, however, play in the BCS National Championship game next Thursday. Since the bowl trip is usually about a week long with the bowl itself 2-3 days before the trip ends, that means The Pride of Oklahoma has not even left for the bowl yet. The team only left today. This is only the third year of the “Plus One” BCS championship, and the first time the Sooners have played in it, so it’s the first bowl game I can remember that takes place after the 3rd or 4th of January.

I don’t know about you folks, but no matter how much I think about it, this still blows my mind a little bit. The Sooners are playing for their eighth national championshp, and The Pride got to spend both Christmas and New Year’s Day at home with their families. Can anyone remember a bowl trip later in the season than this one—or, for that matter, any trip involving the full Pride that took place this long after the fall semester ended? It’s wild!

Our Events calendar has been updated with The Pride‘s public schedule for the trip, including rehearsals and pep events. Keep a few things in mind if you’re making the trip to South Beach:

• Like most modern computer calendars, our event calendar is aware of time zones. If you subscribe to the calendar in iCal or Windows Vista calendar (or even Google Calendar), then be sure to change the time zone on your computer when you get to Miami. (If it’s Google Calendar, you’ll also have to tell Google about your new time zone.)

  All of the events are correctly listed in Eastern Standard Time, so when your computer is set to EST, they’ll show up at the right time. If you’re in Oklahoma now and your computer is set to Central Time, then the events show up in Central Time. (For example, kickoff for the game shows up at 7:15 PM CST, which is correct, but it’s 8:15 PM EST.) Make sure you set your computer time zone correctly or you’ll be an hour early for everything.

  If you use the online version of the calendar, then go to this page on your computer and set the time zone to “America/New York” or “EST”. That sets the calendar preference for that computer. Until you do that, all the online stuff shows up in the server’s time zone, and the server is right here in the OKC Metro area, so it’s all in Central Time.

  If you rarely use this stuff, I’m sorry if this seems like a pain. If you subscribe to the calendar in Mac OS X or Windows Vista, though, and live outside the Central time zone, then all of the game times and other events have shown up in your correct time all along. It’s only a bit annoying when you change time zones, like on a national championship trip! Woohoo!

• Practices are at two separate facilities. We’ve tried to be sure that every event’s details have either an address or a link to a page with a map or more details. If you use iCal, the details are in the event. For the online calendar, click on the name of the event in the calendar and you’ll get a little pop-up window with more details and any hyperlinks to more information.

  Performance times for pep events (and even for pregame) are approximate, because we all know how these things go. The OU Touchdown Club party and the Boomer Bash require tickets, but the links in those events tell you how to get them. The bowl-sponsored events appear to be free, but I can’t swear to that, so be aware.

This has certainly been a crazy season. I can’t remember a clearer distinction than this year between Sooner fans (at least the ones I hang around) and Longhorn fans (at least the ones I hear from): when OU lost to a high-ranked Texas team in early October, we thought that meant we’d never get to the BCS title game. When Texas lost to a high-ranked Texas Tech team in late October, they saw absolutely no reason why that loss should be held against them. If you’d told me it’d go down this way in August, I would have laughed at you, probably with some pointing and mockery.

And yet the Sooners’ workmanlike demolition of the Red Raiders, the Cowboys, and the Tigers in three all-but-playoff games have gotten them to the third attempt for the eighth national championship, in the same city (and same bowl committee) where the Sooners secured or won the second, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh national championships.

Third time the charm? If you watched lots of college football this holiday season, it was pretty obvious that the pundits think Florida’s going to win, but after the Sooners’ late-season comeback and Sam Bradford’s Heisman Trophy, they keep trying to hedge their bets—a lot moreso than they did in 2000, where their pre-bowl discussion was all about whether Miami should be declared national champions “when” Florida State beat Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl. You may remember that game’s final score of Oklahoma 13, Florida State 2, with those two points coming on a fourth-quarter bad punt snap that OU knocked out of the end zone. The heavily-favored Seminoles scored no offensive points.

I don’t predict these things, but I know that the Sooners can win this game and bring that eighth national championship home to Norman. Whether you’re in Dolphin Stadium or just planted in front of a good TV tuned to FOX on Thursday night, put on your reds and whites and get ready to cheer. BOOMER SOONER!

Even though we have many long-standing traditions, the Pride constantly evolves and changes gradually in a manner that almost goes unnoticed most of the time. As a result, after a significant period of time major changes occur. Take a look at this 1958 Pride of Oklahoma OU/Texas Itinerary, from exactly 50 years ago this weekend, and see how different things are today!

E-mail me by clicking on my name: Rita Heath.
Your cooperation and understanding will be appreciated.
Thank you, Rita ]]> http://oubandalumni.org/2008/09/23/contact-information/feed/ 0 http://oubandalumni.org/2008/09/01/tulsa-world-with-all-due-respect/ http://oubandalumni.org/2008/09/01/tulsa-world-with-all-due-respect/#comments Mon, 01 Sep 2008 01:43:45 +0000 Webmaster http://oubandalumni.org/2008/08/31#a466 Continue reading →]]> Wayne Green writes in the Tulsa World today:

Hanging on the wall of my office is a picture of Chauvin Aaron, the 2007 drum major of OU’s Pride of Oklahoma. It’s a peculiar image, although one that any University of Oklahoma fan will recognize immediately.

You think for a moment that you are looking at a headless man. You can’t see Aaron’s face because he’s bent over so completely as he charges out of the band in the school’s beloved pre-game tradition. His back is arched so improbably that the top of his hat nearly drags the ground behind him as the state song bursts out of the trumpet section.

Looking at it, you can almost hear the trumpets swelling: “Oooooo-klahoma!”

If my office were suddenly to burst into flames, and I had to run from the building, I might leave my paycheck sitting on the desk, but I’d grab that picture on the way out the door.

It goes on from there, and is well worth reading, and remembering how hard everyone worked to make it and keep it The Pride of Oklahoma.

Were any of you marching at that Nebraska game on November 23, 1973, that had such a big impact on Mr. Greene?

The Oklahoman ran a nice feature in today’s Sunday Living section on alumnus (and, of course, Director of The Pride of Oklahoma) Brian Britt. Some excerpts:

One hot day in the north end zone of Owen Field, Britt knew this would become his life’s work. It was 1984, and he had been recruited to help teach a complex routine to the OU percussionists. It was painstaking work, but once the players were able to execute the drill flawlessly, Britt knew he wanted to pursue music as a career.

… Britt relies on six graduate assistants and two dozen student leaders to drill small groups of players in every aspect of a new routine. Once learned, these sections can be strung together to create the pomp and pageantry of a visually stunning halftime show.

This season, The Pride of Oklahoma will offer tributes to the rock band The Who, the music of Duke Ellington, a patriotic show and an iPod shuffle [show] that will feature tunes that might be found on a student’s digital music player.

“There are benefits to doing themed shows and more eclectic shows,” Britt said. “With an eclectic show, you have the potential to reach a broader audience. With a themed show, you often lock in on a specific demographic. Our job is to play with a lot of energy and do as varied a repertoire as we can. With fans ranging from elementary age kids to octogenarians, we hope they will hear something … that resonates with them.

“To watch these players have so many amazing experiences, individually and collectively, to see them begin to develop adult thought processes and problem-solving skills, to send them out of this place to be community leaders regardless of their chosen profession, that is at the heart of why I do this.”

You can always use our site to drop Brian Britt an E-mail, but keep in mind that since the first home game is this Saturday, and that the band was selected just this past Wednesday night, there’s an awful lot going on this week, so responses might be delayed.

The “iPod Shuffle” show is up first this year, and we’ll have more details on it as Saturday approaches. We don’t have the full gameday schedule Check out the gameday schedule on our Events calendar; as the article notes, the pre-game concert is 90 minutes before kickoff. This weekend, that means 4:30 PM on the lawn north of Jacobsen Hall. You can also see The Pride Friday night at this year’s Big Red Rally, and of course, during the game against the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga. We hope to see you at some or all of these performances as the 2008 Pride of Oklahoma carries on our tradition!