Mal Holmes

Along about 1:30 this afternoon the Harvard Band will file into the Stadium. In many respected it will be the same band. The uniforms are the same, the musical quality will be the same, the songs the same, but Mal Holmes will not be the conductor today and because of that, the band that marches in this afternoon will be different from those that have preceded it over the past ten years.

What Mal Holmes meant not only to his own bandsmen, but to the players and to everyone who sat on the Harvard side of the field can never really be stated. It is something that made undergraduates sing even though Army had just scored its seventh straight touchdown, something that kept people rooted in their seats when the weather was bad and the score was worse. Something played in front of Dillon Field House that made Princeton students envious even though their team had just crushed Harvard, and something that made marching up the street to the game behind the band as big as the game itself for many people, from elderly professors to Cambridge urchins. It made Holmes as much a part of Harvard football as Soldiers Field. Its meaning will continue, because the things that men like Mal Holmes create are not soon forgotten.