PENDLETON — After missing the registration deadline, Weston-McEwen High School band will not make an appearance at the Westward Ho! Parade this year.

“We missed the sign up deadline and we are looking forward to being back in the parade in 2025,” Weston-McEwen High School Principal Morgan Rauch said.

Pendleton Round-Up Parade Director Tim O’Hanlon said the deadline to sign up to the parade was July 31. Weston-McEwen High School’s new band director, Jacob Gau, reached out to him on Aug. 29. Gau acknowledged the school did not sign up on time and it was too late for O’Hanlon to squeeze them into the parade.

Before Gau was hired in August as the school’s band director, former Weston-McEwen High School band director Rob McIntyre planned for retirement in June but a heart attack pulled him out from the classroom in March. Then his daughter, Hannah McIntyre, at the age of 24, suffered a rare cerebral artery stroke on March 29.

Between McIntyre’s abrupt exit and Gau’s hiring the deadline to register for the Westward Ho! Parade had passed.

“The bottom line is it’s sad,” O’Hanlon said. “I’m a fan of pipes and I wish they would have entered it on time. And not only did they not enter in time, they were like 29 days after the deadline.”

In addition, O’Hanlon said Pendleton High School didn’t sign up this year as well. The parade has three local high school bands and the mounted band moving around in between 70 wagons.

Mac-Hi returns

Milton-Freewater’s McLoughlin High School band returns to the parade for the first time since 2017.

“Decades of Milton-Freewater band kids have participated in the largest parade of the region, and the school district’s newest band director has been determined to get them there again,” according to a press release from the Milton-Freewater Unified School District.

Scott Sumner spent time and effort in the 2022-23 school year procuring band uniforms, the district reported.

With sleek, black shoes to the red feather plume sweeping the back of a Southwest-inspired black hat, Sumner in 2023 said matching outfits with professional flair can go far in building school and community support.

This week Sumner was doing his utmost to explain to the neophyte marchers how the beat of the drum must match the music, which must match the beat of the march.

Sumner also knows how the parade experience can infuse band students with new experiences and pride in their musical ability. He said a successful marching band requires learning new skills, such as timing, coordination, teamwork, memorization and balance.

“It isn’t an easy thing to do — march and perform on any level,” he said.

Round-Up is iconic, he pointed out, and just the fact that Mac-Hi’s band is back in this parade — in uniforms — is a celebration.

“We’re representing the community and school pride. We’re going to build on this and I am excited about that,” Sumner said in the release. “And I’d love for the community to be there.”

Parade placement matters

The event starts off with a bang at 10 a.m. on Friday, Sept. 13, in front Pendleton City Hall, heads east on Southwest Dorion Avenue, turns north on Southeast Fourth Street to get on Court Avenue and continues west to end at the Round-Up Grounds.

The annual nonmotorized parade, features more than a hundred participants marching through the streets of downtown Pendleton on animal-drawn covered wagons, coaches, buggies as well as mounted bands and marching bands.

“The Westward Ho! Parade is a predominantly equestrian event,” O’Hanlon said. “It has hundreds, if not, 600 horses, animals of all different kinds, and those animals don’t do well with bands. And so I need to have the band sign up early, sign up timely.”

Inside the wagon shop at the Pendleton Round-Up Grounds, O’Hanlon sat on an old wooden table surrounded by piles of paperwork with the list of wagon participants who will roll, stroll, walk and ride through the parade.

“It takes three or four different people to work with me,” O’Hanlon said. “We sit down, we go over all the spots. For example, the U. S. Forest Service, they’ve got a new mule team and they can’t be near a band. And that’s really for safety. Safety of the entry. Safety of the crowd.”

O’Hanlon said to fit the high school within the parade order the band would need to sign up on time or at least reach, out shortly after the deadline, before he and the group created and organized the list of parade entries. Once he goes through the whole parade order he can’t let anybody in.

According to the Westward Ho! Parade event website, the parade line-up was last updated Aug. 23.

“We’re very supportive to them and hopefully they come back next year,” O’Hanlon said. “We’d love to have them.”

Rauch expressed she understands the disappointment from parents and community members but she is thrilled to hear about their ongoing support for the school’s music program.