The only Women’s Air Force Band in U.S. history returns to the Inland Empire when the group performs at Cal State San Bernardino on Wednesday, Nov. 9.
The 543rd WAF Band, which was founded at San Antonio’s Lackland Air Force Base in 1951, moved headquarters to Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino in 1958. It remained there until 1961, when the Air Force deactivated the band.
Many of the group’s original members have been playing reunion concerts for years. The past 10 years, however, the band has been even more active, performing at schools and for veterans, and travelling at its own expense.
It was only after 1972, following the passage of Title IX, that female musicians were permitted to play with the men in the U.S. Air Force Band.
But by that time, says Jan Boxill, a baritone sax player who was in the WAF Band when it came to Norton, the remarkable history of the band already had been lost. After an Air Force Band show several years ago, when Boxill told a female band member that there was once a WAF Band, recalls Boxill, “she looked at me strangely saying, ‘That's not possible, I am the first woman to play.’… She had never heard of such a band, but wanted to know more.”
At its peak, the WAF Band carried 235 members with about 50 performers for any given show. They played for military and civilians alike, at fairs and around the country, a Seattle sea fair, for instance, the Rose Parade, Mardi Gras in New Orleans and the Kentucky Derby.
The women didn’t just play music together. They played and worked together. “We did everything together,” Boxill says. They rehearsed every morning, mowed the base lawns, some did office work, all held instrument practices and many trained as medics.
“To me,” says Boxill, “it was the best three years of my life, until I met my husband and had children.”
When the band meets in San Bernardino for this 2016 reunion, it will also hold one of its favorite gigs, playing for veterans at the Jerry L. Pettis Memorial Veterans Medical Center in Loma Linda. That performance will be on Thursday, Nov. 10, at 3 p.m. The same day, the WAF Band also will visit the Norton Air Force Base Museum at San Bernardino International Airport.
The WAF Band’s performance at CSUSB will be held in the Performing Arts Building Recital Hall at noon. Free and open to the public, patrons must get tickets for the show as seating is limited. For tickets, call the CSUSB Veterans Success Center at (909) 537-5195 or email the center at vsc@csusb.edu.
Two CSUSB music majors, Kayla Wright-Solar and Angela Mejia, also will perform with the WAF Band.
Visit the WAF Band History website for more information on the 543rd Air Force Band.
For more information, call the CSUSB music department at (909) 537-5859.