Delta Thunderbirds

The Delta Thunderbirds drum & bugle corps was formed in early 1960 in the “delta” of the Sacramento River, under the leadership of Alfred Mondragon. They were sponsored by the Karl Ross American Legion Post 16, the Moose Lodge 391 and the Luneta VFW Post 52, as well as their own parents’ booster club.

The corps started out marching with the boys in the drum and horn line wearing black pants, with a medical taped white stripe down the leg, white shirts and their black school shoes. The girls in the guard wore long black skirts, white blouses and white sneakers. The Post 16 provided a few well worn out black shakos that looked like they had come from the World War I time period for the girls in the Honor Guard to wear, a few ancient snare and tenor field drums and a single very thin old base drum.

Now back then there weren't many kids in the drum and bugle corps with much experience playing on musical instruments. If the local high school band directors ever found out members were marching in the corps, they would be kicked out of their band, so they just handed each person either a pair of drum sticks or a straight "G" bugle, no piston or rotor and said go home pucker up and try blowing on it a few times until they could start sustaining some resemblance of a note. Once they had managed to conquer that to some extent, they were handed a single horizontal piston bugle, still no rotors back then, using Vaseline on the tuning slides to keep them workable, and graduated into the horn line or drum line.

In their inaugural season, the corps travelled by riding in their parents cars to parades around the central and northern part of the state. The Delta T-birds actually performed about a one minute drill with gates, squad turns, wheels in the street while playing before the judging stands in the local parades in towns such as Salinas, Watsonville, Half Moon Bay, Napa, Yountville, Lodi, Murphy, Angels Camp, Sacramento, Stockton (Portuguese Day Parades) and San Francisco (Chinese New Years Day Parades), which helped the corps win a number of first places over the other junior musical units.

In 1961, the corps managed to raise enough money for the mothers to start sewing our new flags and uniforms. The blouses were Kelly green with two white stripes that went across the chest diagonally from the shoulder to the waist and black pants that had a single white stripe sown down the leg from waist to cuff. The boys now wore white "Bucks" for shoes and the girls wore white cowgirl boots. They also purchased new white plumes and shakos for everyone that had a gray/black marble kind of look as well as a new set of drums that were a sparkling silver with a horizontal green stripe around the middle and two new "bass" Baritone bugles.

In the spring of the following year, the Thunderbirds entered the field of competition in a few contests in northern California against other older junior corps, including the California State Open championships, placing 2^nd in the 1962 “Junior Division”. The next two years saw the Delta unit place 2^nd in 1963 and 3^rd in 1964 in the State Open “Junior Division” championships. A drum line quartet also took the 1964 American Legion State championship trophy in San Bernadino. Over the next two seasons, the Stockton group remained active in limited competitions and in 1967, their final year, converted back to a parade and exhibition unit.

They disbanded in 1968 and several members joined the Joaquin Caballeros senior corps.

Encyclopedia of Drum and Bugle Corps, 1966; rec.arts.marching.drumcorps, sambuca312@aol.com, 12/15/2001; Royal-Air Canada – Drum Corps Planet – Nov 5, 2010; Paul Legault (DCX)

CORPS 1 items

Delta Thunderbirds

DeltaThunderbirds,Stockton,CA,Pin1(BJA)J_U_S from the Richard Elmquist Collection

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