Sam Fardy '62 played clarinet in the 1960 BC Band, pictured above.
Sam Fardy ’62 has spent more than three quarters of his life involved, in one way or another, with the Boston College Bands. Aside from a two-year deployment overseas, the clarinet player has shown up for rehearsals for the past 61 years, and at the age of 79, is eager to continue.
“It will be an extracurricular activity even after I retire,” he said, smiling. “My wife thinks I should ‘graduate’ but I've seen friends in their later years go stir crazy because they don't have enough things to keep [them] busy.”
As BC Bands celebrated 100 years of music-making on the Heights in the fall semester, many current members learned about its history for the first time. Fardy, however, has lived through it, watching a fledgling group of student musicians grow into one of the largest organizations on campus.
Sam Fardy at a concert in March 1998.
“The evolution has been interesting,” he said. “The bands are so much more professional now and the quality of the music is so improved. It was very different back when I got involved.”
Fardy’s entry into the BC Band came the day of his freshman orientation in 1958 when he introduced himself to the band’s part-time director. The director asked what size uniform Fardy wore, and sent a manager to check the closet.
“The manager came back and said, ‘Yeah we’ve got one of those,’” Fardy recalled. “And the director said to me, ‘Do you have a clarinet?’ and I said yes, and he said, ‘Well, bring it and a change of underwear tomorrow because we’re leaving for West Point and we have a game on Saturday.’”
At the time, band membership hovered around 35 people. Occasionally, alternates from the City of Boston band were called in to bolster numbers during parades and other high-profile performances.
“We called them ‘ringers,’” said Fardy. “There was a sousaphone player who didn’t know how to play right away, but he made the marching band look full in the first row.”
The band performed at University sporting events and graduation, as well as in local and regional parades. It received most of its funding from the U.S. military, and about half its members were enrolled in BC’s ROTC program, including Fardy. When he became band president, one of Fardy’s biggest challenges was bridging the divide between its military and non-military members.
“We had to convince the non-military people that it was in their best interests to participate in the parades,” he said. “But I think even they realized that we wouldn’t even have a band if it weren’t for ROTC.”
A portrait of Sam Fardy, February 2020. (Peter Julian)
Despite his loyalty, Fardy occasionally ran afoul of military protocol. During a trip to perform in the New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade, band members were put up in the army base on Governors Island. Shortly after they arrived, an officer ordered Fardy to create a duty roster to guard the instruments. But instead of appointing someone, Fardy asked everyone to either volunteer or chip in $5, which he used to pay the guards.
“I got myself in a little trouble for that,” he said with a laugh. “The military brass came over to me and said, ‘Well, that's not the military way of doing things.’”
When the military wasn’t involved, however, accommodations could be scarce. During one poorly-planned weekend, members of the Pep Band performed at a hockey game near the Canadian border with no plans for where they would spend the night.
“It was wintertime and it was about 20 or 30 below zero and we had no place to stay,” Fardy recalled. “We were contemplating asking the police to let us spend the night in jail.”
But first, the musicians headed to a local restaurant, where they befriended some local college students who offered them space in the dorms. On other occasions, they weren’t as lucky.
By Fardy’s senior year, the band was on an upward trajectory, gaining members steadily and adding cheerleaders and a color guard. Band members accompanied the football team to bowl games, and started bringing home prizes from marching competitions.
“All of a sudden being in the band was a desirable thing to do,” Fardy recalled. “We were traveling, doing the Macy’s Day Parade, and it made it easier to recruit people.”
The BC Symphonic Band in 2011.
After he graduated, Fardy couldn’t imagine his life without the band. He continued to attend weekly rehearsals, eventually joining BC’s symphonic band, now affectionately known as SymBa. Open to students, alumni, and members of the community, SymBa performs several concerts annually, including a holiday show and a summer performance at the Hatch Memorial Shell.
In October, Fardy and the other members of SymBa put on a dinner dance in honor of the BC Bands Centennial Celebration. It made Fardy nostalgic for the 1970s, when the band would perform concerts in the recently opened McElroy Commons. Tickets were $25 and included a hot meal.
“We would fill the place, absolutely fill the place,” he said. “We played marches and showtunes, which were quite popular, and people just loved it.”
Alix Hackett | University Communications | March 2020