Brigade

In the fall of 1960, Larry Grabowski started the “Lake County Drum Corps Inc.”, a mini drum corps network in Lake County. His idea was to create a network of "feeder/training" corps which would supply the main corps, Custer’s Brigade, located in Libertyville, with talent on an ongoing basis. Frank Sosnowski was corps commander.

These feeder corps included the Mundelein Grenadiers, the Wauconda Legion Lancers  and a corps in North Chicago Buccaneers. In their inaugural of season of competition, the Brigade participated at the infamous “Spectacle of Music” in Milwaukee, where they placed 9^th in the “Class B” preliminaries. By the end of 1961, these feeder corps were discontinued and fused into Custer’s Brigade. Over the course of the years, Custer's Brigade was sponsored by various veterans' posts: Libertyville American Legion (AL), Mundelein Sons of AL (SAL), and the North Chicago VFW, the Highland Park Jaycees and Zion-Benton Moose.

Custer’s was known by their 7th Cavalry blue and gold uniforms, not unlike the Troopers and among their instructional staff were mainly ex-Skokie Indians including Joe Atwood on brass, Gene Badel on percussion and Lenny Pickarski on visual. In 1962, the corps returned to the “Spectacle of Music”, placing 11^th in the “Class B” prelims, earned a finalist position at the Illinois American Legion (AL) state championships, placing 8^th and winning the SAL state title. They concluded the season with an appearance at the VFW Nationals in Minneapolis, where they finished in 32^nd place in the preliminaries.

In 1964, things changed. The one time “young kids” in Custer's Brigade not only had outgrown the 7th Cavalry uniforms but had become full-fledged teenagers by then and had acquired some very good experience and talent. Grabowski sold the cavalry uniforms and changed to red and white "Cadet" style uniforms and renamed the corps just "The Brigade". Changes to the staff were also made, including ex Chicago Cavaliers Art Peters on brass, Sam Geatti on percussion and John Opager Jr. on visual. The corps went to compete in what would be their last season and were featured in 7 states.

At the end of the 1964 season, the Brigade disbanded and was largely absorbed by the Des Plaines Vanguard.

Jay McGuffin; Paul Legault (DCX)

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