Patriot band preparing for Ireland trip

Leigh Lewis laughs when Chris Cooper calls her the instigator behind the Homewood High School Patriot Band’s upcoming trip to Dublin, Ireland. She says it wasn’t her suggestion, but she very much supports it — she loved her own trip there in high school.

“I was in the band room helping with something for the band’s 50th anniversary, and he said they were considering an Ireland trip,” Lewis said of Cooper, the band’s director. “I told him I had been the first time.”

Lewis went in 1993 as a sophomore in the Homewood High School color guard.

“Chris asked me if I thought they should go again and why, and I told him I thought it was such a fantastic opportunity for so many kids to travel internationally for the first time,” Lewis said. “For some, it was their first time on a plane. It was a really cool experience to be able to go to another country with your friends and experience the history, different food and a different culture.”

Now, after many months of planning, 336 Homewood High School students and staff are headed to Dublin in March to be a part of the city’s St. Patrick’s Festival Parade. 

Along the way, they’ve been steadily fundraising toward the trip’s $1.3 million price tag. One of those fundraising events is an upcoming concert with humorist and musician Sean of the South and special guest Three on a String. The concert — sponsored by the Homewood Arts Council — will be Feb. 4 at 2:30 pm in the Homewood High School theater.

“We are thrilled about this high-profile funding initiative by the Arts Council,” Cooper said. 

“It creates an opportunity for us to reach a broader base of funding support from across the community for our band, who will soon represent the City of Homewood, as well as the state of Alabama and the United States, on a world stage event. There is a genuine sense of pride for all of us in play here.”

Cooper said after talking with Lewis in the band room that day, he got excited about the prospect of taking the Patriot Band to Dublin.

“I thought, ‘Let’s just apply; our resume is pretty good,’” Cooper said.

The Homewood High School band has performed in the St. Patrick’s Festival Parade twice in the past — the 1993 trip, then again in 1997. The band has also been to “all the big parades in America,” Cooper said, like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City and the Rose Parade in Pasadena, California.

When Cooper got word that they were invited to Dublin, he and others began making plans, and in 2023 he tagged along with another band making the same trip, so he could get a feel for what it was like.

“The trip is fantastic,” Cooper said. “The principal and I went on it last year and followed another band and got to see it firsthand with the same tour company we’ll be going with.”

The Patriot Band will be marching in two parades while there — the St. Patrick’s Festival Parade in Dublin, with a million people along the parade route, and a parade in the Dublin suburb of Celbridge.

Cooper said Celbridge is “like a Homewood.”

“It’s a neat parade, like a Homewood parade — everyone came out,” he said. “I met the mayor, and he called us the ‘America band’ because we’re so patriotic-looking.”

In addition to performing in the parades, the band will tour sites around Dublin, travel to the Cliffs of Moher and the Ring of Kerry and watch a dog demonstration at a sheep farm.

It will take 10 flights to get the entire band to Ireland, and Cooper said more than 75 people will be going on a family and friends trip that will mirror the band’s itinerary.

Another 150 to 200 people from Homewood will also join them for parts of the trip.

Among those extra travelers are Lewis and her husband and daughter, an eighth grader at Homewood Middle School. Lewis’s son, Glenn, is a junior on the drumline in the Patriot Band.

Lewis said she’s “excited for the opportunity that the kids will have.”

A good friend of hers who was also on the 1993 trip will be tagging along — Wendy Story, the principal at Shades Cahaba Elementary School, who was in the color guard with Lewis. Her daughter, Merrill, is a sophomore on the Star Spangled Girls precision dance team.

“As far as I’ve been able to figure, Wendy and I are the only ones who have been on the ’93 or ’97 trip who have kids going on this trip,” said Lewis, who runs the “Homewood High School Band Reunion” page on Facebook.

She said she has a photo of her and Story from the spot where the band was staging for the parade in Dublin, and they plan to recreate it while they’re there, and maybe make their kids recreate it too.

Story said she’s excited about the chance to go back with the band and “experience this trip through a different lens this go-around, as an employee and parent.”

She’s especially excited because she missed the first three days of the 1993 trip.

“I flew standby with my mom, who was the manager for United Airlines at the time,” Story said. “The day our group left was the day the Blizzard of ’93 hit Birmingham and the eastern United States. My family made it with the band on the flight from Birmingham to Washington, D.C., but I then had to watch the entire band board the flight from D.C. to Limerick as we were bumped from the flight due to cancellations.”

It took her family three days to rejoin the band in Ireland, so she’d missed several of the sites that she’ll now get the opportunity to see with her daughter on this trip. But she did make it for the parade, and it was an unforgettable experience, she said. She’s excited to see the next generation of Patriot Band members take part.

“Our band holds a rich history of performing in elite parades and events,” Story said. “By marching in the St. Patrick's Day Parade in Dublin, the students are adding to the continued excellence that comes with being a part of the Homewood Patriot Marching Band.”

Cooper said seeing the parents and the rest of Homewood support the band’s trip has been amazing, including their support for the Sean of the South concert ticket sales.

“They always support the band; it’s just amazing,” he said. “Homewood is the best place to be a band director in the state of Alabama because of all the support.”

Homewood High School principal Joel Henneke said performing internationally is an “amazing” opportunity for the students.

“For many of our students, this could be their first time overseas. I am excited they will get to explore museums and castles and will get to learn about Irish culture and tradition,” Henneke said. “Performing in front of thousands of people and representing your community is pretty special. I’m so proud of our students as their dedication and hard work paved the way for this extraordinary opportunity — being chosen to perform in the St. Patrick's Day Parade in Dublin.”

For more information about the Homewood High School Patriot Band, follow them on Facebook @HomewoodPatriotBand or Instagram @homewood_patriot_band.

For tickets to the Sean of the South event, visit the Homewood High School ticketing website at gofan.co and search and search “Homewood High School.”