Playing Classics--on Bagpipes
Band Keeps Up Tradition at Memorials for Fallen Officers

by Anne Kenderdine

When they laid his father to rest in 1984, William Corcoran yearned to hear the police funeral classic, the mournful bagpipe hymn "Going Home."

But the Washington area wasn't New York or Boston, where police officers of Irish and Scottish descent for generations have formed numerous groups to preserve highland traditions. In this area back when Corcoran needed bagpipers, the only police bagpipe band was in its infancy, not yet ready to offer to play at the funeral of Corcoran's father, a retired D.C. police officer who had died of a heart attack.

Today at a police service, a family would not face such a void, largely because of people such as Corcoran, 51, himself a retired Prince George's County police sergeant and an early member of the Prince George's County Police Pipe Band.

Made up of 25 members, the pipe band--which also plays such marching tunes as "Scotland the Brave," "Minstrel Boy" and "Wearing of the Green"--celebrated its 16th performance in the Washington St. Patrick's Day Parade on Sunday.

The band's goal is to show others the pleasures of music and heritage, providing a way for third- and fourth-generation children of immigrants to reconnect with their families' history and introducing the music to a new set of fans.

The band, founded by retired Prince George's police Cpl. Pat Grogan, a Lanham resident, receives no money from the county police department, just a place to practice in the Prince George's County Police Services Complex on Barlowe Road in Palmer Park.

Band members range in age from 15 to the sixties and pay $20 a month for the instructors. The rest of the operating money comes from performance fees. Members pay for their own sweaters, shoes and pipes, although the band may front the money for an individual and ask to be reimbursed. The band buys the drums, kilts and uniforms, which can cost from $1,200 to $1,400 per individual. More than half are county residents, and just over half are retired or active police officers or firefighters. Most are white, except for one black woman, one of six women in the band.

Over the years, as shift work, health problems or family concerns pulled officers away from performing, civilians and retired officers carried the band, said Prince George's County police Cpl. Steve Campbell, 38, of Calvert County, the band manager.

Band members are in high demand for funerals and memorial services of firefighters, military personnel and police and FBI officers. They have cachet because of their own ties to the police department.

"We probably turn away 50 percent of [requests] because we just can't do them all," said Janet Comeyne, 55, of Bowie, a retired crossing guard supervisor and founding band member.

The band has punctuated many Washington ceremonies, including the July 1999 memorial service for two U.S. Capitol Police officers killed in the line of duty and a White House gathering last St. Patrick's Day for the key players in the 1998 Irish peace accords. The band has enjoyed lighter moments, too. In summer 1998, the group opened for rocker Rod Stewart at the Nissan Pavilion. And once, a band soloist played "The Battle is O'er" while a friend burned her marriage license.

The band members are as diverse as the nature of their performances. Musicians of all levels sit side-by-side at rehearsal, where world-class instructors from the City of Washington Pipe Band demonstrate the group's commitment to teaching. Many members--including Grogan--joined without knowing how to read notes on a page. Anyone called by the music of the pipes, anyone who loves the music and wants to know it better, is welcome, regardless of ancestry. But the past is a powerful force for many band members. As children and grandchildren of both pipers and police officers, they seem as compelled to play the pipes as they are to have green eyes.

"When you see the pipes marching by, it's a feeling that comes out . . . a reverence for the people who have gone before or the heritage," Grogan said.

Riverdale resident Jean Gould, 44, who recently joined the pipe band, is a professional musician who plays clarinet, saxophone and flute in orchestras and in the Army Field Band. Like several others, she joined the group so she could master a traditional instrument and pay tribute to a deceased relative.

Prince George's police Detective Kelly Rogers joined the group one year after her husband, George, a county police officer, had signed on. Just back from their second visit to Ireland, they are growing more passionate about their lineage.

"I didn't think about it so much until I got into my twenties," Kelly Rogers said, glancing at her 3-year-old son who had tagged along to rehearsal one night.

"And you know, when you start a family, you want to be able to tell him more about where you come from."

Grogan founded the band because he was inspired by the possibility of extending his work in the classroom: showing police officers in a different light.

That differs from the explanation in the Prince George's County police department's written history, which says the family of a retired officer, Sgt. Yorke Flynn, requested a piper at his funeral, and the department had no one among its ranks for the job.

Grogan, who spent much of his career visiting elementary schools to teach children about safety, said Flynn's request "wasn't something that came across my mind."

Rather, he said, "this way, they were getting to see that a police officer isn't just writing tickets or arresting somebody. They have children and families, and they like music just like everybody."

Family was what mattered most to Corcoran when he joined the band in 1987. The College Park resident spent three years practicing the tunes "Amazing Grace" and "Going Home."

When he felt he had mastered them, he drove to the hillside in New York state where his father is buried and played into the quiet air. Now, whenever he performs as a solo piper at a retired officer or firefighter's funeral, he gives the survivors a tea towel, adorned with a picture of a piper and the lyrics to "Amazing Grace."

"It's a brotherhood, and the camaraderie we felt when we were on the job doesn't go away just because you retire," Corcoran said. "You spend all those years working together and depending on each other for your very lives."

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