By DONNA THORNTON, Editor
Amy Eagen was Albertville-bound Friday morning, looking forward to reuniting with Aggie band members from across the generations, coming together to mark the 100th anniversary of this musical marching force in North Alabama.
Class of 1999 member Eagen lives in Marietta, Georgia, and was excited to make her way to back to Albertville, as one of the scores of Aggie band alums invited for a reunion. “It’s going to be great to see generations in one place,” she said.
Eagen said she was excited to see the new band room and to see the Aggie band’s 2026 show.
The new band facility was open for tours Friday afternoon, hosted by members of the current Aggie band.
Julie White West of Huntsville, Class of 1978, her sister Susan White Armstrong, Class of 1981 and Kim Beam Myers were enthusiastic tourists Friday, in a band room filled with enlarged photos from throughout the history of the band. They found photos of the dreaded black wool uniforms they wore when they marched. “It was hot as Hades,” West recalled. “They stank,” Myers said of the uniforms, as the season wore on.
Looking at black and white photo of marchers crowned with tall hats, Myers recalled she and friends would put rollers in their hair and tuck them under the hats. “That way if you had a date after the game, you were ready,” she said.
Among those enlarged photos, the women had fun finding themselves in photos, and then sisters West and Armstrong struck gold – finding a 1952 photo of their mom, Peggy Johnson White from her days as a member of the Aggie band.
All were amazed at the facilities band members enjoy now, as they toured the percussion room. They remembered when the current band area was the coliseum, and hosted graduations and other school events.
And they recalled moving to the “new” band hall in the early 1970s. “We thought we’d died and gone to heaven.
“Our band room was part of what they called Aggie 2,” Eagen recalled before the new band room was constructed at what used to be the school’s coliseum.
Eagen was a part of the band during the tenures of directors Stacy Goss and Curtis Buttram???. She hoped the 100-year festivities will recognize the late Goss, and she hopes Buttram and former director Robert Killian would be there for the celebration.
She said she still references those past directors and her days in band many years later.
Both were great not only at arrangements, teaching and directing the band, she said. They had a gift for knowing what would engage the kids and excite the crowds, and that helped forge the “half-million dollar band’s” reputation — that, and giving winning performances at competitions.
“At music competitions other bands would always compliment us,” she said.
Eagen played saxophone and spent three years on color guard. She usually checks out the Aggie band each marching season, if not in person at a game, she finds them online, and she always “keeps my eye on the guard. They bring so much to the performance. They bring color and movement.
“I’m always proud of them,” she said, of all the marching band performers. “I know how much discipline and dedication it takes.”
She has some great band show moments that stick out in her memories. In possibly 1997, she that show included a golf cart that had been enclosed, that rolled out onto the field. Then the exterior of the golf cart dropped and “Elvis” climbed out, ran around and got on top of the golf cart. The show’s closer was an Elvis number.
When she was in the 7th grade, Eagen said the Aggie band did a show that was a medley of Southeastern Conference School fight songs – a perfect way to get the crowd engaged in the show.
West, Myers and Armstrong remember when Al Laser brought Carol King and James Taylor to Albertville for a concert, sometime in the early 1970s or maybe the late 1960s. West and Myers were in middle school, and already in the band, so they got to be involved. They remember practicing “right here in the coliseum.”
Albertville Senior Caylee Parson said she had a great time guiding the friends and other band alums through the band’s current facilities, and hearing their stories about the fun times and “the hard work everyone put into it, to make the program what it is today.
“Without what they did,” Parson said, of the decades of students who made music and marched ahead of the current Aggie band, “we wouldn’t be where we are.”
Retired director Curtis Burttram directs the Aggie Band with alumni from the 1980s and ’90s on the field Friday. MIRANDA HUMPHREY PHOTO | Albertville Cty Schools
