The VMI Glee Club is listed as an activity in the first VMI yearbook, the BOMB, published in 1885.  In its early days, the Club performed as much instrumental music as vocal, with guitars, mandolins and violins accompanying the singing.  The early entertainment took the form of minstrel shows, with formal concerts not becoming standard fare until the 1930s. 

The father of the modern VMI Glee Club was the legendary professor of English, Colonel Herbert N. Dillard, '34, who, while a cadet, was instrumental in organizing a club from informal groups which gathered on the stoops of Barracks to serenade the Corps late at night. 

The Glee Club continues its traditional program of concerts throughout Virginia and the eastern United States for alumni chapter gatherings, recruiting dinners, conventions, Spring Tour, and numerous appearances at VMI during the year.  This year the Glee Club of 35 members has been quite busy, performing at the Homestead in White Sulphur Springs, Virginia; the Carols in The Courtyard Concert on Post; and also for the Governor’s Prayer Breakfast on January 13 in Richmond.  The cadets have entertained thousands as VMI’s vocal musical ambassadors.

In addition to the Glee Club performance, the Hall of Valor Museum Store will unveil posters and note cards incorporating the image of a ca. 1826 fraktur love note passed down in the Bushong family.  The item was bequeathed to the Park’s collection in 2009 by Mr. Lowery Saunders of Manassas, Virginia, a Bushong descendant.  Originally a form of bold calligraphic lettering on important documents, fraktur also refers to the folk art paper creations typical of the German settlers in Pennsylvania and Virginia in the 18th and 19th centuries. 

While presented as a “true love knot,” the Bushong fraktur is actually rendered in the form of a spiritual labyrinth (geistlicher irrgarten).  This relatively rare form of fraktur was usually associated with religious inspiration and instruction, but here the subject is romantic love.

The New Market Battlefield State Historical Park is an accredited museum administered by the Virginia Military Institute that interprets the Battle of New Market and the legacy of the Civil War in the Shenandoah Valley and Virginia generally.  For more information, visit www.vmi.edu/newmarket or call 866-515-1864.

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