Robert Hoe, band and band music enthusiast extraordinaire, was born on January 15, 1922 to parents who had recently moved from New York City to Poughkeepsie, New York. His childhood was difficult and out-of-the-ordinary because, among other things, from a young age he suffered from serious and repeated mastoid infections. These infections frequently required emergency treatment and hospitalization and resulted in five or six operations by the time the boy was thirteen. As a child he seldom completed a school year without one health crisis or another. To minimize the chances of cold or flu, which could trigger a mastoid “attack,” he had to avoid cold and damp weather. Nor was he allowed to play in or near water or to engage in the rough-and-tumble games of childhood. The development of sulfa drugs in the 1930’s saved his life, but the illness and treatment left him totally deaf in one ear.

At one of the many different schools he attended, Bob was introduced to the trumpet and discovered In himself a strong affinity for the instrument and the music he learned to play. He took lessons and played in the school band when he could. In addition, he had a fine tenor voice and often sang in the school chorus. In fact, throughout his life he enjoyed listening to men’s a cappella choral singing, particularly the Don Cossack Choir.

At Pomona College in California Bob majored in mathematics and actually taught math as a professor’s assistant. He was on the school golf and tennis teams, too, and sang in the college glee club. Moreover, he studied music more formally through college courses, in one of which (harmony) he met Marilyn Cannon, a student from Glendale, California. The two married in the summer before their senior year of college.

After graduating from Pomona in 1943 and after Bob had worked for a few months at Kaiser Steel, Bob and Marilyn moved back East to Poughkeepsie, where Bob took over as president of a family architectural woodworking company. In those years, when he was running the Hoe Corporation and his children, Diane and Bob—Robert Hoe VI—were growing up, he played the trumpet recreationally and showed some signs of the attraction and challenge that band music held for him. When he took the family to New York City, for example, as he often did, for a weekend of New York Giants baseball at the Polo Grounds, he periodically stopped by the retail music outlet of publisher Carl Fischer to purchase sheet music for marches he had heard and liked, as well as 33 LP records of service bands—U.S. and British primarily, although over time he got to know and admire bands of other countries and collected them also.

One way he got to know marches and other band music was through a radio program broadcast every Monday night from 1948 to 1956, “Paul Lavalle and the Cities Service Band of America.” Bob was often out bowling on Monday nights, but he arranged to have the program tape-recorded so that when he got the sheet music, he could play the tape and then play along with the band on his trumpet. This practice/hobby was one Bob followed all his life—listening to band music on a record or tape and playing along with the band on his horn. It was a sound his children knew very well: they often went to sleep with the music of John Phillip Sousa and other march composers ringing in their ears.

In addition, throughout the 1940’s and 1950’s Bob enjoyed live concerts of the music and the musicians he was drawn to. Diane remembers being taken as a child to a performance by the legendary Mexican trumpet virtuoso, Rafael Mendez, known as the “Heifetz of the Trumpet.” More commonly, bands, both domestic and foreign, often toured and gave concerts, and when they did, Bob took his family to performances and frequently went “backstage” to meet and talk with the musicians. The U.S. Marine Band, for example, regularly went on tour and sometimes performed in a high school or other venues in or near Poughkeepsie, and British service bands occasionally performed at Madison Square Garden in New York City, marching in formation and sometimes accompanied by a pipe and drum corps and even traditional Scottish, Irish or rural English dancing. Diane remembers a summer afternoon when she was about eleven and her father took the family to a concert the Marine Band was playing at Poughkeepsie High School. When the concert was over, Bob took his kids outside where the bandsmen were standing about relaxing and chatting. He said he wanted to speak to someone in the band and he asked Diane whom he should talk to. She looked around at all the different musicians and finally pointed to one, “Talk to that man over there, he’s the most handsome.” And Bob did in fact introduce himself to that “handsome man” and start a “band talk” conversation with him. Thus began Bob’s long and productive relationship with the Marine Band. The man he spoke to at his daughter’s suggestion was Charles (“Chuck”) Erwin, the cornet soloist and an anchor of the band, who later became an assistant conductor as well. He and Bob maintained a connection and a friendship for decades, until Bob died.

In those years Bob was very busy managing his woodworking business, but he sold that company In the early ‘60’s and focused instead on the bowling business that he had gotten into rather unexpectedly in the mid-1950’s (the local center, where Bob bowled, went bankrupt and he didn’t want to see it close). His knowledge and experience of construction was very valuable to him as he built several bowling centers in the late ‘50’s and early ‘60’s. When the construction was complete and the business was up and running, Bob put together a management team to run day-to-day operations. Over time this arrangement enabled him to oversee and manage the bowling business with a minimal time commitment, and gradually he was able to devote himself more intensely to the music he loved and the project he set himself.

In 1962, partly as a graduation gift to his daughter, he took the family on a six-week vacation in Europe. Bob Hoe, however, was never able to take a traditional, relaxing, sightseeing vacation. He had no need to “recharge his batteries” because they were always charged; he was ever on the move, driven to produce, to accomplish, to work toward some purpose beyond personal relaxation and enjoyment. And so in Europe he sought out and introduced himself to several European, especially British and French, bands and bandsmen, and he was able to purchase relevant sheet music as well. These connections were very important and very satisfying to him on many levels: social, musical, intellectual. Not only were they the beginning of his worldwide network of band musicians and aficionados, but exposure to foreign bands and musicians also whet his appetite for acquisition of more records and greater knowledge about the marches and other music bands played in the U.S. and around the world. Over the next two decades Bob Hoe continued to bowl and to oversee the bowling business he had built, but at the same time band music, which had until then been an enjoyable hobby, became a passion and virtually a full-time occupation.

Throughout the ‘60’s, then, Bob’s interest and involvement in bands and marches grew. He strengthened his connection to the U.S. Marine Band and the British bands he had gotten to know and broadened his connections to encompass other U.S. service bands and bands in other European countries—France (the Garde Republicaine), Italy (the Bersaglieri), Germany, Spain. Another trip to Europe specifically for this purpose greatly enlarged his music collection and his network. It was his habit to establish a connection with one or more individual bandsmen, often the conductor, who would in turn introduce him to other musicians, publishers, fans—and thus his network grew, domestically and internationally. Building and strengthening this network in person as well as by letter and telephone, Bob began to carry on an extensive correspondence with his many contacts, always around bands and band music. Especially important to him was his relationship with the Marine Band. Beyond Chuck Erwin, he grew particularly fond of and close to Arthur Lehman, who played the euphonium. In fact, during this period Bob himself abandoned the trumpet for the euphonium with its deeper, more mellow sound, and he became a great champion of the euphonium (an instrument he referred to, with his characteristic blend of humor, creativity and idiosyncrasy, as the “youff”).

Over time Bob amassed recordings and sheet music for a large number of marches, but he grew eager to expand his music “library” even more. As he read and talked to professional musicians and others in the field, he came across references to marches and composers he was not familiar with. And so began his excursions to the Library of Congress, which purportedly has copies of every piece of music, every written word ever copyrighted in the United States. In the heyday of bands in the late 19th century, it was estimated there were more than 10,000 bands in the U.S.—civic bands, company bands, municipal bands, rodeo bands, circus bands, club bands, college and university bands, boys’ bands, women’s bands et al. Some of these bands, rodeo or circus bands, for instance, played in a specific venue for a specific purpose; others, following the military marching tradition, played in and for local parades. Still others, like many marching bands before them, found themselves not marching but seated and playing for the pure entertainment of their audience, perhaps giving open-air concerts on the village green or in the local park. The marching band and the concert band, then, had a common origin, and the music they played was the same or similar. Bob Hoe was passionate about both.

For all these many bands publishers printed thousands of new marches, written by hundreds of new march composers. But after the turn of the century and especially after World War I, the number of bands began to dwindle and the marches they played were eclipsed by ragtime, jazz and Tin Pan Alley. Inevitably, the sheet music for those marches was no longer of general interest and consequently much of it was relegated, uncatalogued, together with other once-popular pieces, to storage in cardboard boxes in the bowels of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. When Bob learned about this trove of music, he made countless trips to D.C., where he saw friends and acquaintances in the Marine Band, the Navy Band and others and where he searched, sometimes with the help of band historian Bill Rehrig or others, through the more than 6,000 cardboard boxes in the basement of the Library. Along the way Bob made photocopies of the band parts of the marches and other compositions discovered in the search, and these works became an essential part of his music collection. Of course, much of the photocopied music was not arranged for band, but rather was in orchestra and piano editions. Fortunately, there were members of the Clan—Loren Geiger, a school band director, and Gay Corrie, a British school teacher and Sousa scholar, among others--willing and able to make special band arrangements from these editions.

By the early 1970’s Bob’s immersion in the world of bands and band music led him, for many reasons, to undertake the production of vinyl LP records. His increased exposure to and familiarity with the Marine and Navy Bands, in particular, impressed him with the quality of their playing and he wanted to preserve and publicize it beyond the few commercial records the two bands had made; he had collected the sheet music for numerous marches, many of them unfamiliar and even obscure, practically unknown, on his excursions to the Library of Congress and on his trips to Europe and elsewhere, and he wanted to hear, and have others hear, those marches played; he had met many band enthusiasts—and was constantly meeting more—and he shared their frustration that there was only a limited number of available LPs featuring good bands playing good, and varied, marches and other band music.

Bob’s initial reaction was to try to persuade various bands to make commercial recordings of some lesser known pieces or some of his newly discovered and as yet unrecorded marches. He had little success in general, but two bands from Great Britain, with its long tradition of military and brass bands, did cooperate. U.S. service bands were of course forbidden to make commercial records for sale, but in Britain the Scots Guards Band produced two all-Sousa albums and the Band of the Life Guards produced a record of Karl King marches selected by King himself. While having these records made and released was gratifying, it did little to satisfy Bob’s desire to get the many lesser known marches and other music in his library played and available to band aficionados like himself.

As his feelings of frustration intensified, Bob discussed them with his friend Don Stauffer, conductor of the Navy Band, who was intrigued and came to share some of Bob’s feelings, in particular the desire to hear played some of the pieces in Bob’s collection. The upshot, after Stauffer cut through much Navy Department and Department of Defense red tape and got special permission, was a series of 16 LP records, produced by Bob Hoe, featuring the Navy Band playing lesser known but high quality marches from Bob’s collection. Another record “mini-series” was produced from existing tapes of the Marine Band playing compositions by John Philip Sousa. Thus began Bob’s decade-long project: creating and distributing long-playing records made from tapes of bands of his choosing playing marches and other compositions of his choosing from his music collection. Bob called his project “Heritage of the March” and early in the project announced that he wanted to record every march ever written. That was a dauntingly ambitious goal, of course, and for the immediate future he focused instead on selecting what he considered to be the best marches in his collection and making the connections necessary to get them played by top-notch bands.

Even after he began producing records, Bob continued to expand his collection of sheet music, through trips to Washington, D.C., and elsewhere, in the United States and abroad. He struck a motherlode in Germany, for example, when he discovered a large number of rare German marches in the basement of a theater in Wesel and still more in a German radio station. In Spain he found many paso-dobles unknown outside the country. Not only did he search himself, but he also drafted friends and relatives for the quest. His brother and sister-in-law, who traveled widely, were given “band music” assignments and his daughter and her fiancé, who was from Italy, were directed to contact specific composers and publishers on their visits to that country. In the United States, as Bob’s interest in bands and band music of the past became known, he was able to acquire entire libraries of several bands no longer in existence, notably the Alessandro Tomassino library.

More challenging was the recruitment of quality bands to make the recordings. By the early 1970’s as the Stauffer/Navy Band albums launched his “Heritage of the March” project, Bob had made many friends and acquaintances in the band music world here and abroad and was corresponding, visiting, and otherwise communicating with many of them on a regular basis. He called this circle of band aficionados his “Clan,” the “Gang,”. and they were the group he first looked to for help with his Heritage project. Over time, too, he became involved with various clubs and organizations such as the American Bandmasters Association and the Windjammers, a group that met for several days every year to celebrate and play circus and circus march music. In this way Bob’s Clan grew and so did the number of bands available to record for the Heritage project. Thus, from his home and office in Poughkeepsie, Bob networked with bands and bandsmen and band devotees throughout the country and the world. And his involvement with them grew through the 70’s and beyond, as his music goals were progressively realized and his achievements recognized.

Several years before Bob began producing LP’s, he had connected with the Allentown Band, the oldest extant civic/community band in the U.S., located in northeast Pennsylvania, some two and a half or three hours by car from Poughkeepsie. Bob had great respect for the Band’s excellence and for its conductor, Albertus Meyers, and had made friends with several musicians in the band. He had even begun on occasion to drive down to Allentown to participate in band rehearsals with his euphonium. As his collection of lesser known, or even unknown, marches grew, he began to take not only his “youff” but also his tape recorder and sheet music parts from marches in his library, which the bandsmen, Bob of course included, would sight-read at the end of their rehearsal. Thus it was logical that the Allentown Band would do recordings that under Bob’s supervision would become LP’s in the Heritage of the March series.

Over the next decade other bands, particularly university and college bands, service bands and foreign bands played for Heritage albums. The routine was generally the same: Bob selected the composers and the music, he sent the scores and parts to the band to rehearse, the bands recorded the music on tape—sometimes Bob was present but not always, especially as time went on and the sheer volume of record-ing increased—and sent the tapes back to Bob, who edited the music and produced the albums. In his music room at home he had a piece of quite sophisticated equipment to listen to and edit the tapes, even with earphones, notwithstanding his deaf ear. In addition, a member of Bob’s Clan, John Johnson, was a recording engineer for Columbia records and used his technical expertise to enhance the sound fidelity of the recorded music. When the tapes were well-prepared, Bob got them to a company in Pennsylvania Dutch country, not far from Allentown, that produced LPs from tape recordings.

Meanwhile, Bob concerned himself with the album covers. Each cover had of course to list the titles of the marches on the record. Beyond that necessity he included photos, biographies, anecdotes about the music and/or its discovery. Because many of the composers featured were unknown, perhaps had died in obscurity, finding biographical information was sometimes difficult. But in this endeavor also, in an age before the internet, Bob’s Clan came through. A telephone company employee/Clansman had the wherewithal to telephone throughout the nation and the world, seeking family members of obscure composers. In this way Bob connected with many “long lost relatives” and was able to gather significant biographical information. Other members of the Clan then helped write the biography and/or program notes as appropriate. Bob then worked with a Poughkeepsie-area graphic artist on the design, including the layout and color scheme, of the album cover and had the covers produced.

At this point the records, put in their covers, were ready to be shipped out to Bob’s recipients, first of all the band that made the recording for the record—bands received 200 records for distribution to band members and supporters—then to both aficionados in the Clan and to a select list of public libraries, radio stations, colleges, universities and other educational institutions, all of whom, individuals and institutions alike, received the records for free. It has been estimated that over the course of the project Bob Hoe gave away some 250,000 records, the entire process—production, creation, mailing and gifting of the records—financed by him personally. He intended that members of the Clan play and enjoy the music in a serious and committed way. For this reason he expected individual recipients in gratitude to write him comments and analyses of the music and the band featured on each record. As for records to the libraries et al., Bob had two motivations: he wanted to make the records widely available, with the hope that others would be drawn to band music and marches as he was and he also, given the expense of his project, wanted the tax advantages these donations afforded him!

Bob’s friends, employees and family had always recognized him as a born teacher, ready to explain how things worked, or should work, and why. That trait very much influenced the Heritage of the March project: From his experience over decades Bob learned a lot about bands and band music, especially marches, and inevitably developed strong opinions on the topic. Naturally he wanted to share his knowledge and his opinions with other band enthusiasts, teach them what he had learned and how his thinking had evolved. And so he began the habit of writing—or rather, typewriting (which he enjoyed doing and did easily—without, however, correcting any errors or caring to make the page look neat and clean and professional!) a “gang letter” to be included in a shipment of records. These “letters” (addressed, as it were, to Bob’s “Clan” or “Gang” of band enthusiasts and march lovers) examined various aspects of the music on the shipped records and the band or bands that played it, made observations and pronouncements about differences between bands and composers, styles of play, etc. Included also might be anecdotes about how the music was discovered or the band recruited and other relevant facts about the production of the record and its cover, as well as comments about various aspects of the overall Heritage project and those involved in it. The gang letters thus created and personalized a direct connection between Bob and the Clan members worldwide who received the records.

That personal connection, often established and maintained solely by mail, was very important to Bob. Through the 1970’s and early 1980’s, as the Heritage project grew, there were close to 300 Clan members with whom Bob corresponded at one time or another, although the stable, core group numbered far fewer than that. Bob kept up an intense, active correspondence and a telephone connection with perhaps fifteen or twenty Clansmen, several of whom Bob visited on his trips to D.C. and several of whom came to visit him in Poughkeepsie. Arthur Lehman, euphonium soloist in the Marine Band and considered by Bob to be the finest euphonium player (or, as Bob would say, “youffer”) in the world, was certainly one of Bob’s closest friends and confidants, though Art never traveled outside the D.C. area. Other Clan members close to Bob included Art Himmelberger of the Army Field Band and Bill Rehrig and also to “The Heritage Encyclopedia of Band Music”), a high school band director and teacher in the D.C. area, who was very interested in and supportive of the Heritage project. Bob came to rely on Bill to help him in many ways, and Bill spent many days, and weeks, in Washington and Poughkeepsie creating band arrangements and helping to sort and file music, as well as organize the records that had been produced and the letters Bob received. From that experience and from his own reading and study Bill became very knowledgeable about bands and band history in general and about the Heritage of the March music and bands in particular. Therefore, when in the late 1970’s a publishing company wanted to reprint and sell out-of-copyright band music and asked Bob to be their advisor in this endeavor, Bob explained he was too busy with his project to do so and recommended Bill instead. Bill did in fact work with the company, even funneling music from Bob’s collection to them for reprint and sale and also writing some up-to-date parts for older compositions.

Subsequently the company requested that Bill create a kind of “band dictionary,” a mini Grove’s so to speak, covering the composers whose music they were selling. In response and with Bob’s knowledge and support, Bill began compiling the names of composers to be included and writing relevant “dictionary entries.”

Not long after work on the “band dictionary” began, however, on February 16, 1983, Bob Hoe passed away in Poughkeepsie, NY, at the age of 61, leaving his family, his home, his business and his large band music library, including sheet music, photos, letters, and innumerable records, both the commercial records Bob had purchased over the years and the private label records he had produced. In addition, there were numerous tapes not yet converted into LPs. The sheer volume of material was staggering. A funeral service was held at Bob’s home, and many friends and Clan members, band enthusiasts, made the trip to Poughkeepsie. Members of the service bands were there, including Chuck Erwin of the Marine Band and Don Stauffer of the Navy Band. Chuck Erwin, a Colonel, attended in uniform, full Marine regalia, directed by his superiors to represent the Marines at Bob’s funeral “because Bob Hoe was such a good friend and supporter of the U.S. Marine Corps and did so much to publicize and promote the Corps through music.”

Bob’s friends and fellow band enthusiasts were adamant about the importance and value of the material in his music collection and about the necessity of preserving the results of his efforts over the decades before he died. With this in mind and remembering also the dedication, even passion, Bob had brought to his Heritage of the March project, Marilyn was determined to honor that dedication and commitment by moving forward on unfinished “business,” particularly on the tapes that had been recorded but not made into 33 LPs at the time of Bob’s death. In short, Marilyn decided to finish Bob’s unfinished work, whatever was “midstream” when he died, a decision that meant she had to have the tapes made into records and then distribute the records to Clan members and others. In getting all this done, she had the advice and assistance of many of Bob’s friends as well as of Rod Elden, a tuba player and band aficionado who learned about the project after Bob’s death and who volunteered his help. Marilyn had of course many commitments and activities of her own, but she worked diligently, though sometimes sporadically, on the Heritage of the March project. And when after several years the records finally were sent out, it was with a feeling of great satisfaction that she included in the shipment a note explaining what she had done and why and thanking those who had helped her.

Meanwhile, for many years after Bob’s death, just as when he was alive and directing the Heritage project himself, the mail brought requests for certain records and for band parts to particular marches. Marilyn did her best to fulfill these requests, but she needed more detailed advice and guidance from those who knew the collection better than she. And so she followed up on a suggestion she had been given shortly after Bob’s death: she, her son Bob and her daughter Diane established the Robert Hoe Foundation and invited various members of Bob’s circle to sit on its Board of Trustees to guide the family with regard to the material in the collection. The Board included Art Lehman, Bill Rehrig, Paul Bierley (Sousa scholar and biographer), Brad Glorvigen (a Clan member and amateur musician from Minnesota), and Bob’s immediate family.

In the 1980’s and 1990’s, after the Foundation was established, the Board met annually in the environs of Washington, D.C., to discuss the production and distribution of records, what to do with the many items in the Robert Hoe collection, and other Foundation business, including especially the “band dictionary” Bill Rehrig was compiling. Over time Bill’s “dictionary” expanded greatly and was redefined as an “encyclopedia.” Ultimately, as the project grew in ambition and scope, Bill joined forces in preparing the manuscript with Paul Bierley, author of a definitive biography of John Philip Sousa and likewise a Foundation trustee. Since no commercial firm showed interest in publishing an encyclopedia of marches and march composers, the Robert Hoe Foundation committed to oversee the project and publish the final product, an undertaking that clearly supported and advanced Bob Hoe’s educational purpose. The Heritage of the March Encyclopedia of Band Music was in fact published by the Foundation and made available for sale in 1991. Subsequently the Encyclopedia has been supplemented as necessary and more recently it has been digitized, so that it is currently available in digital form.

Bob Hoe first produced records in the early 1970’s. He died in 1983. In that decade he devoted most of his time and effort, and much of his purse, to his Heritage of the March project. He did maintain a bowling business, and he went to the HoeBowl office every weekday he was in Poughkeepsie, but he oversaw the business by bowling in leagues twice a week and by discussing the business and giving guidance to his management team for 20 minutes or half an hour at the end of the day. Instead, during those years, at home and at the office, it was the Heritage project that dominated his daily routine. He didn’t ordinarily get to the office before 10:30 or so (he was a night owl and seldom went to bed before 2 or even 3 a.m.) after having stopped at the post office to pick up the mail, letters from Clan members and others who had heard of the project.