Family celebrates dual Sweepstakes

By Donnie A. Lucas

It wasn’t exactly a case of lighting striking twice, but it was close.

The first time the Albany Lion Band earned a Sweepstakes Award for earning Division I ratings in marching, sight reading, and concert contests was in 1962.

The band that year was in the second year of a new director who had to dip down to the eighth graders, and even a few members from the seventh grade, to have a group large enough to truly compete.

Fast forward to 2022, some 60 years later, when the Lion Band repeated earning the Sweepstakes Award.

And to be clear, the most recent win was the third for the band, having also gotten a sweepstakes 40 years ago in 1982.

One of the similarities that makes the first win and this year’s efforts line up so much is the length of service of the directors and the use of junior high students.

But there is still more.

One of the members of the 1962 band was Lynne Jacobs Teinert, an eighth grader.

Another connection between the 1962 band and the current group is that her grandson, freshman John Birkla, is a member of the award winning 2022 band.

The news of this year’s sweepstakes win mistakenly suggested that this was the first time in Albany school history for the honor, or at least there didn’t appear to be any record of an earlier win.

However, shortly after it was reported as possibly the first sweepstakes award, members of both the 1962 and 1982 bands chimed in.

“We thought we were the first to win sweepstakes,” John said. “We were so excited, but then we found out we weren’t the first. We are still excited anyway.”

Teinert said when she told her grandson about the earlier sweepstakes, he was skeptical.

“I don’t think he believed me when I first told him,” she said.

John confirmed that he had doubts.

But after pulling out old yearbooks, the record was set straight.

Teinert said her band mates loved their new director, Eddie Green, a former Albany student who only taught here for two years before moving on to the rest of an illustrious career as a band director at larger schools and even universities. Green went on to become an institution in band directing and instructing would-be directors for over 20 years at the University of Houston.

The current director, William Vaughan, is in his second year at Albany.

“We were just devastated when Mr. Green left,” Teinert said. “We all loved him and worked so hard to do everything he asked.”

She added that there was a lot of excitement coursing through Albany at the time, with the Albany football team winning back-to-back state championships both in 1960 and 1961.

According to Teinert, both bands were similar in size, marching around 35 on the field then.

“What was different was we did precision type marching then,” she said. “We wore ruts in the football field at the stadium, so we had to move to find a new place to practice.”

She said that she is just as proud of this year’s band as she was her own.

“It takes a lot of hard work to get to that level,” she said.