Bobby Pope: The bands played on
Lanier and Willingham high schools had some great battles on the turf at long-gone Porter Stadium, and if you think I am writing about football, well I am not. The battles took place at halftime of the football games between the bands for the two schools: Lanier's Sugar Bear Band and Willingham's Pride of Dixie Band.
It was music director Bob Barnett of Lanier against music director Jim Littlefield of Willingham. Barnett didn't want his band to be known as the Poets, so he received permission from Post Cereal to use the Sugar Bear designation. The Sugar Bear was the official mascot of the cereal Sugar Crisps.
It was which band could outdo the other and from my recollection, as I saw most of the shows, I would have to give the edge to Lanier. Barnett, who arrived at Lanier in 1965 after working a year in Sparta, where he commuted daily from Macon, had a flair for theatrics and started his halftime Hollywood style spectacles for the game against Willingham in his first year. Even though the Rams won the football game 13-0 before a crowd of more than 12,000, Lanier took halftime honors, highlighted by an appearance from 007, James Bond. The show was based on the 1964 Sean Connery blockbuster "Goldfinger."
Bond, portrayed by David Carter, who later served as Macon's mayor, touched down on the 30-yard line during halftime in a helicopter. The reason for Bond's visit was to save a fair young damsel in distress, Pussy Galore. He made it just in time as the house blew up on the other end of the field as he flew away in the helicopter. Barnett also used members of the Lanier ROTC staff who were firing weapons with blanks in the show.
Willingham used florescent lights and fire for its share of the halftime festivities, but its show was no match for the Lanier performance.
Following the James Bond theme, Barnett drew from Hollywood several more times. He used the Steve McQueen movie "The Great Escape" one year and the TV Show "Batman" another. In the "Great Escape," he secured motorcycles, a 30-caliber machine gun and an M-48 Tank borrowed from the National Guard in the production, and for "Batman," he built a zip line attached at the top of the stadium to the playing field surface for the super hero to enter Porter Stadium. The tank was stationed at the end zone near the scoreboard, but was camouflaged, and no one realized it was there until it was unveiled when the performance began.
It was always a big secret what the band had planned. It held closed practice sessions at the Lanier baseball field, which was blocked from public view by hedges for several months, prior to the performance.
The band did traditional halftime shows for the rest of the Lanier games, saving the big show for the Willingham game. Always wanting to know what Willingham was going to do, one of the parents of the Lanier Band members flew a Cessna 182 Airplane over its practice sessions to scout what it was planning for halftime.
There are not many times that a halftime show is as good as the football game, but that could be a valid argument from the Lanier-Wililngham games back in the 1960s.
Contact Bobby Pope at bobbypope428@gmail.com
This story was originally published November 9, 2015 at 5:56 PM with the headline "Bobby Pope: The bands played on ."