Twirlers
brim with vim, vigor
Thursday, December 01, 2005
MICHELLE MANDEL
BEAVERTON -- Two dozen women gray enough to be grandmothers queue up two by two in a gym at the Tualatin Hills Park and Recreation District athletic center.
Music by the Get A Life Marching Band begins to blare, and feet get moving. Marching, actually, while the women's hands start twirling.
It's a strange sight given their ages and the fact they're spinning slender, 2-foot-long rubber-tipped silver batons.
Twirlers aren't extinct: several Portland-area clubs exist, and some high school and college bands sport a high thrower or two. But compared to the hey-days of the 1930s, 40s, 50s and 60s, when high-steppers commanded their school's highest social respect, the sport has, like the twist, danced to the sidelines.
That's what makes this practice session so special, so grandly nostalgic of decades gone by. A dozen times a year, this grinning group of Portland-area women -- ages 45 to 73 -- spin batons for the Get A Life band, and march in local events such as Beaverton's annual parade and national ones such as Disneyland's recent 50th anniversary parade.
On Saturday, Dec. 10, the band and baton twirlers head to Salem for the PGE Festival of Lights Holiday Parade.
Twirling's magical appeal: When music blares, suburban skins are shed and teen-aged skills emerge.
"Just because you get older doesn't mean you have to grow up," said Jan Keiski, 57, of Beaverton, who first twirled at age 9. In the 1960s, she served as head majorette at Gresham High School.
Anyone able to pass a basic audition can join the Get a Life group. Members practice sporadically, at various Portland-area sites, mostly when the band meets. Talents vary, so five choreographed routines -- learned by videotape -- are kept simple. Parade participation is optional, though most show up for at least a third of 12 annual opportunities.
Patti Waitman, 63, of Southwest Portland leads the group. The maternity case manager twirled in the late 1950s and early '60s for Portland's Wilson High School.
She gripped her first baton at age 4 after watching twirlers in Portland's Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade.
"I begged and begged my dad until he went to a dime store and bought a baton that came with a little booklet with all the basic twirls," said Waitman, who helped start the Get A Life twirling group 11 years ago.
"I took baton lessons, and by the time I was 7, I was in the Junior Rose Parade."
A baton's not hard to spin, say those who do it, but intricate moves can flummox the fingers. Roof-high tosses sometimes end in chin-smacking hits.
Injuries, say twirlers, come with the sport at any age. At a Seattle parade, marching with the Get A Life group, Keiski stepped in a pothole and broke her ankle.
"I just kept going," said Keiski, a customer resource analyst for the Bonneville Power Administration. "And when they wheeled me off on a gurney to the ambulance, I kept twirling for the audience.
"They loved it."
Youth is when these twirlers learned to finger flip the baton. Marcy Tuffli, 73, of Beaverton says batons of today feel light -- like a long umbrella -- compared with those of the 40s when she marched as a twirler for New Rockford High School in New Rockford, N.D.
"Everybody just laughed at my old baton when they saw it," said Tuffli,
the group's oldest member. She just started twirling again after a 55-year
hiatus.
Get a Life twirlers wear coordinated uniforms, often shorts and T-shirts, but they're simple compared with the fancy ensembles worn in younger years. Judy Guist, 53, of Rock Creek vividly recalls her semishort green wool skirt, fitted jacket, matching hat and white boots with "big tassels."
"We looked sharp," said Guist, who marched for Lincoln High School in Canton, Ohio, until graduating in 1969.
Guist's older sisters, both twirlers, taught her the skills, including how to spin batons simultaneously in both hands. At special events, the ends of batons were sometimes lit on fire to wow audiences even more.
That's when Guist says precision became even more important.
"We didn't do it that much," she said. "We were always afraid we'd torch the dry grass."
Twirling's reign lasted about 40 years, from the Hoover to Nixon administrations, before dance squads overtook twirlers in sis-boom-bah popularity. The sport's birth dates to the early 1900s. It's thought the term "majorettes" came from a man named Major Millsaps, who founded Millsaps College in Mississippi and who tagged his "lady athletes" majorettes.
The fad went by the wayside in the early 1970s, largely because of Title IX, which steered young women toward traditional male sports and away from social sports like twirling.
That may be true, but Get A Life twirlers say they're now too old to play soccer or run the 100-yard dash.
They're not too old to spin, though.
"Our pleasure comes from watching the response of the audience along the sidelines," Keiski said. "Kids can't believe grandmas are out there twirling.
"The response makes us feel young."
Michelle Mandel: 503-294-5959; michellemandel@news.oregonian. com
The Oregonian had two different "front page" pictures in different editions; Judy Guist did the honors in the second edition! (Click Judy for full-size scan)
Story and photos © The Oregonian, 2005