The 1917 Great Lakes Navy Band Visit to Ottawa, Illinois

At noon on Friday, December 14, 1917, a special train pulled into Ottawa, Illinois. Out stepped forty-two young sailors from the Great Lakes Naval Training Station, north of Chicago. They brought a band, a drill squad and an officer in charge. A committee of Ottawa’s leading citizens was waiting at the station to meet them. By the Free Trader-Journal’s account, the visit “turned Ottawa into a gala city in honor of the visitors.”

The sailors had come to play music and to sell something small: a stamp that cost a quarter. But the town had been told to expect one more guest, and he was the most famous bandleader in America.

1917 Free Trader-Journal story Jackies' Band Here; Pleases Big Crowd at High School, about the Great Lakes sailor band in Ottawa

The man who was supposed to come

Three days earlier, the paper’s front page was full of excitement. With the band, it said, “will be none other than Lieut. John Phillip Sousa, patriotic to the core and America’s beloved bandmaster and composer.” The paper spelled his first name with two l’s. It added that “Assurances that John Phillip will accompany his boys” had been given to the people running the stamp campaign.

That was big news. John Philip Sousa wrote marches that every brass band in the country played, like “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” In 1917, after the United States entered World War I, he joined the Navy and trained the bands at Great Lakes. A visit from Sousa would be like a visit from a movie star.

1917 headline Ottawa on Mettle for Appearance of Great Lakes Band, saying John Phillip Sousa will accompany the Jackies

Forty-two Jackies

On Friday, the paper told who was on the train. Sailors were called “Jackies” back then, and “There were in all forty-two Jackies in the party.” Besides the band, there was a drill squad, a team that marched in perfect step. The officer in charge was Chief Yeoman Austin O’Malley. A yeoman did the Navy’s office work, and before he joined up that spring, O’Malley had been an editor at the Chicago Tribune. Granville English played the piano.

And the bandleader? “Harry Rachig was the band leader,” the paper said. It didn’t mention Sousa at all. The famous man wasn’t with them.

1917 newspaper paragraph listing forty-two Jackies, a drill squad, pianist Granville English and band leader Harry Rachig

The whole Great Lakes band had 500 players, so it was split into smaller groups that traveled on their own. This group had been on the road since the first of October. The night before Ottawa, it played in Aurora. That evening, it would play in Streator.

A birthday at the Clifton Hotel

First came lunch. The town took the sailors to the Clifton Hotel, and the sailors gave a show in return. Between courses, they played violin, piano and vocal solos and sang as a quartet. One sailor did a comedy act that, the paper said, “alone was worth the price of admission.” The reporter decided they were “not only a very live bunch, but a very talented one.”

Then came “One happy stunt.” One of the sailors, named Grimes, was turning 22. At lunch, he was handed a wrist watch for his birthday. Then, as part of the gag, came a pretend “sentence”: he “should be shot at sunrise.” Grimes didn’t miss a beat. The paper said his answer “came right off the bat”: “Can’t be there; I don’t get up that early.”

1917 newspaper paragraphs about the sailors' show at the New Clifton hotel and a wrist watch for Grimes's twenty-second birthday

1,500 voices

After lunch, the high school cadets and the school band marched the sailors to the township high school. The auditorium “was filled beyond its official capacity and cheers rang out from 1,500 voices.” When the band began the national anthem, every member of the drill team, the six singers and the cadets stood still with a hand raised in salute.

The paper printed the whole program. There was “Semper Fideles,” one of Sousa’s own marches. There were two trombone tunes the paper spelled “Lassie Trombone” and “Salle Trombone.” Pieces like that were made for laughs, with the trombones sliding up and down like a giggle. There was “Over There,” the big new war song of 1917, and “America, Here’s My Boy.” The band finished with the “Marseilles,” as the paper spelled the “Marseillaise,” the national song of France, America’s friend in the war.

1917 newspaper paragraphs about 1,500 voices cheering in the high school auditorium and the band's program, from Star Spangled Banner to Marseilles

Rows of sailors in white caps and leggings march with their instruments down a tree-lined city street behind an officer, about 1918

What a quarter could do

Then the guest speaker stood up. He was Julian S. Nolan, a Chicago businessman who was touring Illinois with the band for free. His job was to explain War Savings Stamps, a brand-new way to lend the government money to pay for the war. Nolan said the stamps were for everybody, and most of all for school children and families without much money.

Here’s how it worked. “A Thrift Stamp costs twenty-five cents,” he said. With your first stamp, the post office gave you a card with 16 spaces. Sixteen quarters make $4. When the card was full, you added 12 cents and traded it for a War Savings Stamp. A certificate held 20 of those. Fill it before January 1, 1918, and it cost $82.40. On January 1, 1923, the paper said, “the government will pay the owner $100.” So a kid who saved quarters for the war would get back more than they put in, five years later.

1917 newspaper paragraph explaining that a Thrift Stamp cost twenty-five cents and how a full card became a War Savings Stamp

1917 poster of Uncle Sam holding a War Savings Stamp card beside a boy and a girl, reading Boys and Girls! Save your Quarters, Buy War Savings Stamps

Three days earlier, in Rock Island

Ottawa wasn’t the only town the sailors won over. On Tuesday night, December 11, the Great Lakes band played and Mr. Nolan spoke at the Augustana College gym in Rock Island, Illinois, for “an audience of 3,000.” The Rock Island Argus said the music ranged “from the classical to the jazz and ragtime type.” Right at the start, the sailors gave their famous “whistle-yell” for Rock Island and Augustana. The college boys cheered back, copying the sailors’ own “stuff” as best they could. The visitors thought that was very funny.

1917 Rock Island Argus story Big Crowd Hears Fine Concert by Naval Musicians, about the Great Lakes band at Augustana gymnasium

Also in town that weekend

Page five of the same Ottawa paper shows what else people could do that weekend. The Crescent Theatre promised a new Charlie Chaplin comedy, “The Adventurer,” for Saturday, “First Time Ever Shown in Ottawa.” On Sunday, Alice Brady starred in “Betsy Ross,” with admission at 5 and 10 cents.

1917 Crescent Theatre ad for Shirley Mason, Charles Chaplin in The Adventurer and Alice Brady in Betsy Ross

About the cover

The photo at the top of this story shows sailors of the Great Lakes band marching with their flags in a big city parade, with men filming from the curb. The Bain News Service took it between about 1915 and 1920 and did not write down the city. It isn’t Ottawa, but it’s the same Navy band.

Ottawa never did get its famous bandleader that Friday. It got forty-two sailors instead, and they were enough. They played to a packed school, taught kids what a quarter could do, and gave the town one great line to remember. Grimes, the sailor who turned 22 over lunch, said it best: “Can’t be there; I don’t get up that early.”