Community coming together for Farmingdale High School homecoming

After the crash were days of wakes and funerals and no music in the Farmingdale High School band room, only students' quiet talking and the noise of therapy dogs.

But there came a moment, last Friday, when the musicians decided to play. 

“They started taking their instruments out,” said Greg Warnokowski, the school district’s director of fine and performing arts. “The drum majors, who are students, conducted and led the way. Our band directors took out their own instruments … I decided to join them and played my sax, and then our Superintendent [Paul Defendini] walks in — he was a band member as well back in the day — he grabbed a baritone horn out of the closet … The kids were actually smiling and making music again.” 

The marching band will play at a pep rally Friday night before the football team’s homecoming game against Baldwin, its first major public performance since the Sept. 21 bus crash on the way to a Pennsylvania band camp that injured dozens of band members and killed two adults, band director Gina Pellettiere 43, and chaperone Beatrice Ferrari, 77. Some band members, still recovering from injuries suffered in the upstate crash, will march but not play. Others will play but not march.

Taking the field

There will be a spot for all of them on the field, said ninth-grade band director David Abrams, who, with symphonic band director Matthew DeMasi, has taken on the duties that were once Pellettiere’s.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators are examining "vehicle factors" like the bus tires, motor carrier operations and what the agency described as "survival factors," but are not due to release a preliminary crash report until later this month. 

On sports-mad Long Island, Farmingdale trumpets its 3,718 student musicians and artists at all grade levels on the district homepage. For the high school’s 275-member band, one of Long Island’s largest, each home game is a showcase event, a chance to perform in front of hundreds.

“We spend all this time to do what essentially turns into six performances,” DeMasi said.

After a win last Saturday at Port Washington High, junior Dennis Finkel, the football team’s quarterback, said his team knew Friday’s game would be more important than the score.

“That day and that game will bring people together. … We play an important role in our community. It would be great if everyone coming together for the game helps them feel better.”

In any football season, each game is huge and Friday's will bring together the school community for something deeper, said Farmingdale’s athletic director Jeanne Berkoski,

"Every football game is a big community event. This game is going to be a chance for everyone to be together.”

A moment of silence

Friday's game will start with a moment of silence, but much of the marching band’s program will be like it always is for the annual game: They will play the national anthem, the Daler fight song, and others, picked last spring, including foot stompers like Tina Turner’s “Proud Mary” and Rihanna’s “We Found Love,” the electronic dance hooks rearranged for brass. 

The band will jettison some of its synchronized marching maneuvers, a move that might have been unthinkable in a normal year but necessary in this supremely abnormal one, the directors said. 

The camp in Greeley, Pennsylvania was canceled after the crash. It had always been a time for the band to hone itself: Past years have included three rigorous practice days with team-gelling movies and volleyball at night.

“We used that time to learn all our drills,” Abrams said. “We do four songs for a halftime show, each song would have five or six drill moves — that’s not something we were able to do this year.”

The marching band still plan some maneuvers, including one with marchers who will spell out the school nickname, DALERS, on the field at halftime.

Under Pellettiere, Abrams said, the band program had room for advanced musicians playing college-level material and for those with less aptitude who could “just hang with their friends.” All of them, he said, have benefited from her lessons that go beyond the music: “It’s responsibility, time management, interpersonal skills … It builds confidence, and lets you be expressive in a different way.” 

The first day back at band practice after losing Pellettiere “was momentous,” DeMasi said. “We knew it would be emotional, and for some students, it was difficult for them to have their instruments out again.”

Pellettiere’s office is “still here in the band room,” Abrams said. “Students are able to see it, walk by and look in it.” 

They’re also coming to the band room to work, he said. 

“They come in for a few minutes of normalcy, and we do what we’ve always done,” he said.

With Roger Rubin