Scrap Metal Band opens concert series at Fort Sill

By Mitch MeadorJune 21, 2018

Bandstands second birth
(Photo Credit: U.S. Army) VIEW ORIGINAL

FORT SILL, Okla., June 21, 2018 -- The Scrap Metal Brass Band will perform the first of a summer concert series today at 6:30 p.m. at the Air Defense Artillery (ADA) Bandstand on Prichard Field, announced Chief Warrant Officer 2 Bridgette Brenmark, commander of the 77th Army Band.

"It will be the usual, brass band, get-the-crowd-pumped-up music," she said. Staff Sgt. Kandra Garnett will be singing six tunes.

Various elements of the band will play in months to come. The series continues through October with concerts on the third Thursday of each month, Brenmark said, adding, "We'd love to see you there!"

To find the bandstand, drive north on Fort Sill Boulevard to Upton Road, turn west and go to Prichard Field.

Though it has yet to be formally dedicated, the ADA Bandstand was built in 2012 to replace a long-missing Fort Sill landmark.

In "Story of a missing bandstand," posted online by the Army Corps of Engineers Tulsa District, writer Ross Adkins told of how a bandstand for parades and ceremonies was originally built on the Old Post Quadrangle in 1911. It later moved to a location on what was then called the "New Post."

According to newspaper reports, a storm destroyed the bandstand in 1922. What replaced it was a very basic open framework of metal posts extending upward then curving inward toward the center before turning down and terminating in a light fixture on each post. Without a roof, the bandstand had totally lost its gazebo-like appearance. The new structure was eventually redesignated as Building 1600M and maintained at least through June 30, 1935.

By 2012 only the foundation of the bandstand remained. When funding finally became available to rebuild it, Jeff Hirschfeld, Tulsa District construction engineer at Fort Sill, began searching high and low for drawings, specifications or a picture that would give him an idea of the original bandstand design and look.

Hirschfeld spent several months searching. On his own time, he dug through the internet, newspapers, museums and even the Library of Congress and the National Archives for clues. Available images only showed a portion of the bandstand or lacked detail.

Finally he hit paydirt at Lawton's Museum of the Great Plains. Hirschfeld and retired Corps employee Kim Shirley made contact with the museum's head curator, Deborah Anna Baroff. She took them to a cabinet where the museum's photo archive was catalogued on index cards waiting to be digitized. One card mentioned the Fort Sill Bandstand in its title. It was for a film negative dated 1915.

Adkins writes:

"After retrieving the negative and holding it up to the light, Hirschfeld said it was better than they had hoped for. 'I was amazed by the quality of the picture,' he said. 'With a print from the negative, I was able to pretty accurately reproduce the specifications by scaling the size of the steps and the persons in the photograph. Not only that, but it also showed us its exact location on the post.'

"Hirschfeld said, 'In the end, this was one of the most interesting searches I have undertaken in my career. In reality, I knew that finding an image of a structure that only existed for 10 years on Fort Sill, just years after Oklahoma became a state, was pretty slim. I don't know exactly why I chose to embark on the great journey. However, I did find an image of three ladies enjoying a nice summer day on a bandstand that just happened to be on the bandstand I was looking for.'"

In 2012 Kirk Mullenix of Great Plains Technology Center offered to build the roof for $5,800. The Fort Sill Directorate of Public Works covered engineering costs of roughly $9,000. Framing was expected to run another $8,000. Both the ADA Association and the Friends of Fort Sill began raising funds, and the resurrected bandstand was completed within a few months.

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