Salvation Army Seattle Temple Corps
Northwest Division
History of Dan Ross, 2nd Time

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 After Bonna and I were married, I was soon out of the US Army. We returned to Seattle where Bonna went to work for the National Bank of Commerce. I went back to the University of Washington majoring in Physics. We got into a simple routine. We would work our tails off during the week, but on Friday evening, I would be parked in the alley behind the bank. We would leave directly from the bank and head for the mountains where we would camp overnight on Friday. On Saturday night, we would return to town and go to the corps for church Sunday night and Sunday morning. As it turned out, Bonna gets really restless if she isn't doing something for the Lord. She and I have a peculiar habit. We count heads. We categorize people. We keep mental lists. We try to improve the situation. One day Bonna and I were talking and we began talking about the children in the corps. They had absolutely nothing to do beyond Sunday School. We had both been in great bands and activities at the Salvation Army and at school when we were children, so between us, we thought it would be a good idea to do something enjoyable for the kids. We decided that with our musical background, we should start a Young People's Band and Singing Company. We both had done something like this before in some measure.

I had attempted to teach some of the kids to play musical instruments before I went into the Army, but there was no support in the corps and it didn't go anywhere. However, Bonna had been an officer and had created full fledged singing companies in corps she had been in. Just before we returned to Seattle, Major Lloyd had been transferred to the Evangeline Residence in Seattle and Captain Duff had been transferred into the Seattle Temple Corps. We asked Captain Duff if we could start a YP Band and Singing Company and he said yes. He had children that would take part in the program. Except for my prior feeble attempt, something like this had never happened since the 1930s when Dick McAbee had a Young People's Band at the old Citadel Corps. I actually got a job because the person doing the hiring had been a child in that band and he remembered how good Dick McAbee had been to him and the other children. When he found out I was a part of the Salvation Army, he hired me on the spot.

 We decided we would teach the kids absolutely everything they needed to know to be outstanding musicians. We taught them how to read music including all of the sharps and flats. We taught them the history of music. We taught them how to disassemble and reassemble their instruments and how to clean the slides and grease them and how to oil their valves. We had slide presentations I made on how brass instruments were manufactured including slides of inside the Besson instrument factory. We taught them about the different finishes on brass instruments including lacquer and silver plating. All of the while, we were rounding up instruments for them to play. We then taught them how a mouthpiece works and how to "buzz" into the mouthpiece to produce a sound. Then we taught them different scales and finally, simple tunes.

All of the time we were teaching them brass band playing we were teaching them how to sing. For the girls, we taught them how to play tambourines. We had a ball and the kids loved it.

In addition to all of the extremely hard work, we took the kids on field trips. This was before seat belts were invented. The kids were skinny little things and we could get 21 of them into our VW bus. We seldom had trouble with any kids an all of the years that we've been working with children, but one day we loaded our VW bus with 21 kids and took them to the Seattle Museum of History and Industry by the University of Washington. This was a fateful day that would never happen again. The kids were thrown out of the museum and we were told to pack them up and leave. After that experience, we never have had trouble again on any trip with kids of any age.

 None of the girls had ever played a tambourine before, but Bonna was highly experienced. In fact, when Bonna was an officer in Texas, the Texas Division had an all women's brass band. This was a full sized really nice sounding brass band that actually took trips and stuff. The bandmaster was Major Rodolf Lanier. One day in Mexico, the band was playing a march and the Timbrel brigade was playing tambourines near the front of the platform. The band was down below the platform and the Timbrels were right above the band. Some of the women in the Timbrels got to giggling and one of the laughed so hard she fell off the stage and went right through the bass drum. I heard this band play at YP Councils in Dallas and they were very good.

So because of her vast experience and expertise, Bonna started teaching the girls how to play the tambourine. Evie McConnell assisted her in this area.

 I have lost contact with Skip Olsen, but his father, Mike, is mentioned frequently in The New Frontier, the newspaper of the Western Territory. Mike is the one who is always in international situations distributing aid in places like Russia and Iraq.

Ranjan is a certifiable genius. Near the time this picture was taken, I took him to a physics class with me just for the fun of it. The chalk board in front of the class was over 60 feet long. The professor filled it from left to right with physical formulas involving calculus and atomic physics. When he was done, I asked Ranjan if he understood any of it. He said, "I was OK right up until the end and then I lost it." Ranjan's father is one of the most highly acclaimed cancer researchers in the world. Doctor Roi was hired by the University of Washington because of his spectacular discoveries in the field of cancer research while in his native India.

Dr Roi offered to help me with my chemistry so i met him at his office in Bagley Hall. He showed me on the blackboard in his office some of the discoveries he had made on the molecular level in his cancer research. Then he said, "OK, let's go down to the undergrad library." I thought he was going to show me some cool ways to calculate the chemical reactions I was studying. The first problem involved a reaction with Tungsten. He took me to a shelf containing books about chemical reactions and grabbed about ten books. Then he said, "Get some books. We'll look in the index for Tungsten reactions until we find the one in your problem."

Dr Roi was offered positions at two different universities, one in Arkansas and one in New Jersey. He asked me what I thought so I said, "Take the one in New Jersey." He then told me that he preferred the one in Arkansas because he wanted to help people and they had promised him that he would be in a position to treat people. I told him that if he went to Arkansas there would be problems with racists. He chose Arkansas. Later he wrote me a letter and told me that he had moved on to the little private college in New Jersey because his children were treated so badly because of their skin color. I wrote back and told him I was sure he would enjoy Princeton University more than the school in Arkansas and his children would get along better there. One day I saw a picture of Ranjan in the War Cry receiving an award at the corps he was attending near Princeton University.

 NEWS FLASH: I registered at Salvationist.org today, November 5, 2003, and within a few minutes, I had the email address of Skip's sister in Georgia so I sent her an email. A few minutes later, her mother, who lives in Nevada, got a phone call from Skip who lives in Louisiana. Skip's mother from Nevada was visiting Skip's sister in Georgia. She told Skip about my email and a few minutes later, Skip emailed me. He told me most of what he has been doing since Bonna and I left Seattle to move to Texas.

Register at Salvationist.org for reunions with old friends.

 Our old corps was at 1414 6th Avenue in downtown Seattle. Someone had found a theater for us to worship in near the old corps location. This was on 5th Avenue and it was a bizarre theater. The interior was painted black. I mean the theater seats, the walls, the ceiling, the floor, absolutely everything was a flat black. There were no windows in the auditorium. This was so the theater lighting would be effective. The seats were individual theater seats with tiny little holes in them for ventilation. Every time the congregation stood up, there was and awful whooshing sound as the cushions expanded and sucked in air. When the congregation sat down, there was an even louder whooshing sound as the cushions were compressed and expelled air. It was awful and not at all conducive to standing for prayer.

Bonna and I had Junior Soldier meetings while the Holiness meeting sermon took place. Everybody would be together for the meeting and then, just before the sermon, the Junior Soldiers would be dismissed for their own separate classes.

This whole situation was deteriorating. Since we were in a theater, we had to accommodate whatever play was going on. The band would come in and look at the stage to see where we would set up. One week there would be a bedroom setup on the stage and the band would have to set up around the bed. Another week, it might be the inside of a bar. The final straw came the weekend that Norman Bear croft visited our division. There was some avant garde play going on which required ramps and swings. The kids were running up the ramps and jumping to the next ramp and swinging from ramp to ramp. Norman Bearcroft was the Bandmaster of the Canadian Staff Band. I really admired him because of what he did in reforming the Canadian Staff Band. After this Sunday morning, though, I had the utmost respect for him and he became another hero of mine. We had talked to Mrs. Bearcroft and she had told us about her husband's lack of memory. She would be talking to him and he would go off into some kind of musician's haze and begin writing music in his head.

However, I was sitting in the band when he walked in the door. Our band had become pretty sullen and there was nobody happy. Our congregation was fed up with our worship situation. I couldn't see anybody in the band smiling. It was pretty gloomy. Norman Bearcroft came to the platform, reached in his tunic pocket inside his uniform and pulled out a little Bible. He turned to the Bible verse he was going to use without any hesitation. He began reading the Bible. His talk was so to the point and the verse he read was so right on the money it was as if he had been with us in that building all of the months we had been there. Guys in the band were crying and he had really affected that corps. I don't know if his sermon affected anybody else, but that day several of the older guys in the congregation went to the Divisional Commander and told him we had had it and were never coming back to that building again. The following week, all of the members of the corps received phone calls telling them that we would be meeting in a Methodist church on Boren Avenue which had been vacated by the Methodists.

 We had moved to the Methodist Church on Boren and every body was a little bit relieved. We could hardly wait to get into the new building, but the Young People's Band and Singing Company practices continued unabated with astounding results. The kids were getting very good at brass band music, singing and tambourine playing. We decided to have a concert. There was nothing anywhere around the building which indicated we had anything to do with The Salvation Army. The Salvation Army is a flag waving, banner flying organization loaded with symbolism and the trappings of a mighty Army. At our corps there was nothing. I decided it was time to do a little decorating so I bought a four foot by eight foot sheet of plywood. I laid out a Salvation Army Crest, the main emblem of The Salvation Army, on the sheet of plywood and got out my trusty little saber saw. I cut out the Crest and then painted it. This was back when the Salvation Army associated with the Salvation Army of England had an Eagle atop the Crest. Above the Eagle, I made a red banner trimmed in blue out of the sheet of plywood which says "SEATTLE TEMPLE." The letters are in yellow. Beneath the Crest, are the two horns which symbolize the Salvation Army Musicians. Beneath all of that I made a red banner trimmed in blue that says, " YP BAND & SINGING CO." Then I took it down to the Methodist Church and hung it from the ceiling against the back wall.

That night when I came into the hall to prepare for the concert, I saw a group of people just inside the door crying. I thought, "Uh Oh, this can't be good." I asked them what was the problem and they said, "There's no problem. We walked in here and saw that crest and it's the first time in months we felt like we were back at The Salvation Army."

That Crest moved to the new corps building with us and has been used by YP Band & Singing Companies ever since even though the Salvation Army has replaced the Eagle on the official Crest with the Crown.

 Here's how good God's little Timbrel brigade was. Someone at Divisional Headquarters (DHQ) or in Everett decided it would be a good idea to have a "Timbrel Congress" in Everett, Washington. I believe Olin and Dianne Hogan were the Corps Officers there then. Evie McConnell was leading one group of Timbrels and Bonna was leading the other. We got to the Corps in Everett and found that there were quite a few Timbrel brigades. Our corps had two Timbrel brigades and so we asked the Corps Officers if it would be OK if both of them performed. They said sure. In addition to all of the Timbrel groups, the divisional band and a black choir were there. For some reason, neither Bonna nor I were in the divisional band at that time. We watched as each corps Timbrel brigade played through their march. Every corps had children and adults in their Timbrel brigades. I thought that it was only for children. Our beginning brigade played. No adults were in the group. They were pretty well received. The divisional band had played something I don't remember. The black choir put on a really great and LIVELY performance and then sat to watch the rest of the performances. Suddenly, the Divisional Youth Secretary announced that the last Timbrel brigade would now play. It was another corps. Bonna said, "He's not going to let our girls play." She took off like a shot, and I saw her stop him in the middle of the aisle. A lively discussion ensued. He declared that there could only be one brigade per corps. Bonna told him that she had been told both of our groups could play. The corps officers tried to intervene but it took a couple of DHQ officers to convince him to allow our older girls to play. When I say "older," I mean 8, 9 and around 10 years old. He finally agreed. All of this took place during the "last" march.

We had planned on using the divisional band to accompany our girls so they were prepared. The only problem was that they didn't have very many people and they had to find a trombone for me and an alto horn for Bonna. Our girls knew what to do so there wasn't an adult in sight. The band, sitting in the balcony, started the march and the girls marched briskly onto the platform and started their drill. They were so impressive. I kind of took a glance every few seconds to see that everything was going OK. The band got down to what is called the TRIO in a march and all of a sudden the crowd started shouting, whistling, screaming and clapping. The Timbrels were marching off of the platform and down the center aisle of the hall. They had been so impressive and looked so good in their Junior Soldier uniforms, that the crowd was going wild, especially the choir members. When the shouting started, I stopped playing to see what was going on. Half the band did the same and the music almost stopped. Then the girls continued their drill, playing their tambourines in the middle aisle right in the middle of the audience. This made the shouting and whistling even louder when the crowd realized the girls weren't finished yet. It was fantastic! The girls finished their drill and marched out while the crowd was still cheering and applauding. They had turned a rather boring event into a spectacular climax.

When our Young People's Band and Timbrel members went to music camp at the Salvation Army Camp Arnold at Timberlake for the first time after we worked with them, they won every award at the music camp except for three which were taken by much older campers.

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