News

Funeral service for Hall of Fame’s Dick Pronti

The funeral service for World Drum Corps Hall of Fame member Dick Pronti will be held at 10 am Friday December 30 at St. Dominic's Church, 97 West Main Street, in Shortsville, New York. Visitation will be held from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 pm on Thursday December 29 at Halsted-Patrick Funeral Home, 19 N. Main Street, in nearby Manchester, New York.

Both communities are located a few miles northeast of Canandaigua in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York.

He passed away in the early morning on December 24, after being in intensive care at Thompson Health centre in Canandaigua since the beginning of the month with a severe viral infection.

A retired schoolteacher, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2005. For more than 50 years, he contributed to the drum and bugle corps movement as a horn player, drum major, color guard member, visual designer, staff consultant and judge. In 1988, he initiated the Individual and Ensemble contests that have become a highly popular part of the Drum Corps Associates (DCA) championship tournaments on Labor Day weekends.

He played horn and marched as drum major with Shortsville Shamrocks from 1958 to 1967. For several years in the 1960s, his involvement with the Shamrocks overlapped his duties as winter drum major with the Emerald Cadets of Rochester and horn player with Geneva Appleknockers. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he marched in the Syracuse Brigadiers color guard, was drum major of the junior Appleknockers and the Suburban Knights senior corps of Buffalo. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, he served as the visual designer for a number of corps, including Appleknockers juniors, Dunkirk Patriots, Tri-Town Cadets and the Shamrocks.

His judging activities date back to 1974. He was a visual judge, caption head, president or past president of the New York Federation of Contest Judges over a period of more than 30 years. He was also a visual judge in DCA contests, adjudicating many DCA championships. He was chief judge and judging coordinator of DCA from 1987 to 1991

He served as show consultant with the Hawthorne Caballeros for almost 20 years, beginning in 1992.

For more information about the World Drum Corps Hall of Fame, including biographies of members and a listing of corps of the decade since the 1940s, visit the Web site at www.worlddrumcorpshof.org/

Cards to his home address:

5052 North Road
Canandaigua, NY 14424
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Doug Kleinhans has been in and out of the hospital in Medina, NY...He is not doing well...His white blood cells are elevated, He is 6'2" tall and was down to 128 lbs.. Ruth Ann said he looked like a refuge from Hitler's concentration camp...He is feeling better since being off chemo and food tastes better to him now...The chemo had taken care of a tumor on his kidney, but now he has a spot on his lung...He may be going back home in a day or two. I asked her to tell Doug that many of his drumming buddies have been asking about him...”

If you would like to send him a card, his address is:

Douglas Kleinhans
11388 Main St.
Shelby Center, NY 14103

Our President, Bob Glovna, has been diagnosed with ALS. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often referred to as "Lou Gehrig's Disease. Many of us know it as the disease that caused the death of our fellow member, Tru Crawford.

Before retirement, Bob was the Director of Park City Pride Drum & Bugle Corps. The corps has taken the lead in working with the ALS association to help raise funds to combat this terrible disease. They have set up a “Community of Hope” tribute page for Bob on the ALS Association website and will be participating in events throughout the summer and fall to help raise money. Please help by visiting the Tribute Page at: