Sometimes forever.
Can a corps really be lost? Can it really vanish into forever?
A corps is a living beast with a big pulsating heart. It’s fucking ALIVE. It breathes together. One beast.
When a corps serenades you, it’s like a magnificent creature approaching you, sitting on its haunches and singing to you, and only to you. If singing to you means shoving thousands of little needles into your heart and letting the blood drip out your eyes.
It has a name. It has colors. It has a song. It has a motto. You look into any member’s eyes and you can see all the pride.
It has a past. A history made up of so many stories, so many summers. Tied up in vast storm of emotion. The emotion that makes the ache in your gut and the stinging in your eyes and the rawness in your throat and the thudding of your heart.
It has a past of success, of mistakes and recoveries. It has a past of laughter and sadness and friendship and love. It has a past woven of little pieces of the souls of all who joined its ranks, of all who cheered it on, of all who sought out its name just to be reminded of all it stood for.
Will it have a future?
surfingtheflowersong 
Drum Corps is a diminishing activity. It’s true, that is what the board of directors are trying to figure out right now. How to solve this problem. I think of it this way. The tiger is a dying species that we have been trying to save for years. At first scientists decided it was being over poached, so when they put laws against poaching tigers, tiger population still declined. So they decided that it wasn’t the poaching of the tiger but the poaching of the deer and elk it eats. While population increased, it barely increased. They figured out it wasn’t just poaching and a lack of food, it was also the food of the food of the food. There isn’t enough of the enhabitat to support the ecosystem we’ve over forested and destroyed. I think the only way to solve the diminishing drum corps problem is to go to the diminishing arts programs in school. Promote band and chorale music and even make it mandatory in some schools. Now this could be a wrong hypothesis. When drum corps was HUGEEE in the 80s and 90s, about 90% of the marchers didn’t ever do band in school it was either a family tradition or a lodge organization (which basically all drum corps come from, that or a church) But I’m not sure investing in those will bring more kids to drum corps. DCI on Espn really helped also, it was a great promotion, but we no longer have the money to get finals on ESPN. I don’t believe that drum corps are a live group or “person”, there is no blood in it’s vains and no mind of it’s own. it’s a business and needs to be ran as so. That being said Drum Corps do have personalities and traditions. Once Corps fold they still live as long as the last member, they can always be revived. With a great board of directors. George Hopkins doesn’t run the Cadets. He works for the cadets as the Executive Director (He only choses shows and makes sure they win). The board of Directors are the people who run it. they can fire George when ever they want. And the same with any corps. But I do believe it’s different at Surf because I think Bob runs all of the directors spots himself. Surf should have folded long ago. But they don’t because Bob is a marketing GENIUS!!! We need more Bob Jacobs (marketing majors) Dan Acheson the head of DCI was also a marketing major. So with great marketing majors, funding school arts programs and lodges I think DCI would be revived.