Talk about one ‘Heck’ of a way to spend Thanksgiving
As this edition went to production, local band leader Jake Heck and his bride, Morgan, were boarding a plane for New York City, where he will meet up with hundreds of other band directors from across the country—from all 50 states, in fact—for the performance of a lifetime.
A little over a year ago, Heck said he got an invitation to join up with some 400 other band directors from across the United States chosen to perform at one of New York’s premiere annual events that goes with Thanksgiving about as well as turkey and cranberry sauce.
Heck, who leads the music programs at both Hallettsville’s Sacred Heart Catholic School and Shiner’s St. Paul High School, will be performing in the 97th annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.
History of Macy’s parade
The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was first held in 1924, featuring Macy’s department store employees, entertainers, and animals from the Central Park Zoo in New York City, according to I Love New York.
That original parade in 1924 featured a route from Harlem to the retailer’s 34th Street store, with 250,000 people in attendance. That route was just shy 7 miles, but it was shortened significantly through the years. Today, the route clocks in right at 2 ½ miles, beginning to end.
This year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade will air live starting at 7:30 a.m. (Central Time Zone) on NBC and Peacock.
Viewers can tune in at this time on televisions, computers, and mobile devices. It marks the first time that the parade will begin 30 minutes earlier, compared to past parades that aired live beginning at 8 a.m.
Heck said the time change occurred to better accommodate those in the parade, setting up for various performances and then rushing to make end destinations and after-parade speaking engagements, like Good Morning America, for instance.
When he visited with the newspaper for this story early last week, Heck said that no formal plans were made to visit with the TV show’s anchors, mostly because the producers don’t plan that far in advance. “Hopefully, we can set up something a little more solid when we get there next week,” he said.
Considering next year marks the event’s centennial and we were just now having the 97th annual parade, we couldn’t help but wonder which years they must have skipped. Turns out all three years there was no Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade—that would be 1942, 1943 and 1944—were all tied to our nation’s involvement in World War II, and the need for items like rubber and helium.
Also, that same ultralight material they were already using to make the trademark balloons that have become such a staple of the Macy’s event also happened to be the same stuff the military used to make parachutes.
That there may have been a shortage of the stuff was hardly surprising considering about half the Allied troops used those to make their entrance to the mainland of Europe on D-Day. Much of the 101st, 82nd and 502nd Airborne infantry divisions did, at very least.
A long time ago on a coastline far away…
Heck can’t hardly mention his New York trip without looking back to another point in his life when he had the privilege of representing his home state of Oklahoma on its state centennial back in 2007, back when Heck was about the same age as many of his students are now.
And with good reason, too. “We did many parades across Oklahoma,” he said. “But the biggest event we did was perform for the opening ceremony at the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California.”
Well, that, and then he marched in the parade, of course. Which was no small deal for a kid from a tiny town like his, back in Oklahoma, he said.
Nor is it wasted that he now gets to perform in the nation’s largest city on our nation’s opposite shore and basically do it all again, only this time he’ll be performing as an adult professional, representing his fellow professionals across America. That he gets to do it, too, while representing places like Shiner St. Paul and Hallettsville’s Sacred Heart thrills him even more, he said, because his school in Oklahoma was even smaller than either of those.
“There were only 50 of us altogether, in every grade,” he said. “Yet there I was then, performing at the largest parade anywhere. It’s why I shared this with my students in both Hallettsville and Shiner, the day after I found out. It’s perfect example that the size really doesn’t really matter at all, especially when you’re talking about where you’re from.”
When talking belt sizes, however, that’s a whole other matter.
The second thing out of Heck’s mouth when announcing the New York trip to his Facebook friends last October was “I’ve got to get myself into waaay better shape between now and then” (his spelling, not ours).
That, too, was something he said he’s done in the months since. He worked with a personal trainer and focused on building his strength and endurance in his preparation for the 2 ½ mile-long trek that awaits him in New York’s parade route.
He even said he bought the precise same snare drum rig he’ll be playing in New York so he could practice and get accustomed to the weight of it. Although the entire group will never have played together until they arrive in New York this week, their plan is to perform all their music sans sheet music.
Which in and of itself is no small feat, either. Where most horns and woodwinds get to catch a break here and there along the route in between songs, as a drummer, Heck he said he’ll be playing the entire parade route, performing marching cadences in between songs.
He did the same thing when he did the 6-mile parade route in Pasadena back in 2007, he said. Of course, he was a teenager back then, and accustomed to playing every day. The same wasn’t true today.
Which is why being in shape was so critical, he added. To that end, he says he believes he’s just about ready. If he had any doubts before, he says he participated in a recent 5-mile walk in New Braunfels to test the theory.
No land speed records were set, but he did finish. “That’s something I know I never could have done a year ago,” he said.
Packed schedule ahead
When he landed in NYC Saturday, Heck said he had a packed practice schedule to keep. Mind you, apart from recordings and sheet music, he’s never played most of the music with anyone else around.
From the looks of it, they have just three whole practices to go from perfect strangers suffering from jet lag to performing as an organized, cohesive marching unit that’s 400-members strong.
They couldn’t have gotten much darker or earlier than their first practice, scheduled for 2 a.m. Sunday at Manhattan’s Herald Square.
Thankfully, Heck said it was not all like that. In fact, he said he was rather pleased to see that several fun activities were also scheduled that week, such as getting to see the world famous Rockettes perform or heading over to Broadway to see Sweeny Todd.
That will be especially meaningful, considering Heck said he got to bring his wife and her parents to New York with him for the week.
His in-laws are particularly excited for this opportunity, not just to see the Big Apple but also for what it means for Heck, musically.
You see, his in-laws also play with him and his wife in the Victoria Crossroads Community Band. So, they’re all music lovers. And they couldn’t be prouder of all he’s managed to accomplish during his relatively brief time here in Lavaca County.
And not just for this opportunity in NYC. Heck’s been making quite the mark with his job, too, or, as the case may be, his JOBS.
Backing students, student backing
As most folks around here already know, Hallettsville and Shiner are oft times rivals when it comes to sporting events and, of course, musical competitions, mostly because the two are exceptional at whatever they do. That applies not only to the public-school programs but almost doubly to the two Catholic schools.
I mean, where else do you have two large Catholic parishes like theirs, complete with PreK through 12 Catholic schools, both set roughly 10 minutes apart, who hold dueling church picnics twice a year? Not only that, but both events—held the same the Sunday of Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends each year—are also astoundingly successful each spring and fall.
And not only do they compete against one another at most everything, the two are usually facing the other in the final rounds of a state championship someplace. Most recently, that just so happened to be the state marching band contest, where Hallettsville’s and Shiner’s parochial school band students took the field against far larger 5A and 6A schools in the competition.
Not only did they take the field, they owned it by beating them all—all 15 other schools that were involved, with Shiner taking first place and Hallettsville, second—and both schools were under the direction of Jake Heck.
Just three whole points was all that separated their performances, Heck said. Shiner got a 273, and Hallettsville got a 270, both well ahead of the school that took third in the TAPPS competition (which is sort of like the UIL equivalent for private and parochial schools in Texas).
Last spring, it was the Hallettsville Indian Band that claimed the top seed in the performance band competition. The Shiner Cardinal Band took third in that competition, the top three places all within 10 points of one another.
Former student playing in NYC, too
That was just Heck’s second year with the Hallettsville students, who incidentally finished dead last in the same competition the year before. This year marks Heck’s second year with the Shiner kids, and clearly, they, too, have seen a remarkable improvement in a very short time.
His success with both programs earned Heck the 2022- 23 Fine Arts Director of the Year Award at the summer TAPPS convention.
That’s no simple feat to manage, especially for schools as competitive as theirs.
And it was significant enough that when some of his band parents heard he was headed to NYC and, given that this journey wasn’t technically school-related and thereby on Heck’s dime—not either school’s—a few of those parents got together to make sure he had a little folding money in his pocket when he got to the big city.
“I can’t thank them enough for that,” Heck said. “That was really quite sweet and thoughtful of them.”
Before he made the move to the Catholic schools here in Lavaca County, Heck worked with band students in the public schools, serving as an assistant band director under Dr. Jennifer Voges with the Fighting Bulldog Band over in Yoakum.
With luck, Heck says he’ll hopefully get to visit with one of his old Yoakum students, who he said will also be performing in New York’s parade this week.
While Heck will be drumming to his own beat in the band director band, Yoakum High School graduate Roger Dominguez will be strutting his stuff with members of the Texas Tech Raider Band, who were also invited to the take part in this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Dominguez is a music major at TTU, and who knows? He very well could be a future member of the band director band, in training.
“I can’t wait to represent my profession, our communities and the great state of Texas on a national stage,” Heck said. “It is such an honor and privilege, both then and now, just such a great and unique experience. I always assumed my time in high school was really a once in a lifetime opportunity. Well, it looks like I might’ve gotten that part wrong.”
Watch for them both starting at 7:30 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning, Thursday, Nov. 23.