The VFW Band of Colorado
All are welcome, any skill level, join us!
We rehearse Sunday nights from 7:00 to 8:30 at VFW Post 9644, 2680 W Hampden Ave, Sheridan, CO 80110. We rehearse most but not all Sundays, so please see the calendar on the right side of this webpage for specific dates. The Post is located on "olde" Hampden Ave (parallel to and just north of the new Hampden Ave expressway), about half a mile east of the intersection with S. Federal Blvd.
We are a very active group, with performances year-round. In late spring and summer we play at many community events, but every year our highlight is performing at the Memorial Day Ceremony at the Ft. Logan National Cemetery. Many community members join us for that, nearly doubling the size of the band. We also play Fall and Spring concerts in the large hall at VFW Post 9644. Links to videos of all of these types of performances are below.
CONTACT US -- For questions about membership or anything regarding the band, please email web@littletonmusic.org. For information about the Colorado VFW please visit https://vfwco.org/.
See and hear us online
Youtube (Littleton Community Music Association)
Our Mission and History
Founded in 1888, by former Leadville mayor and later U.S. Congressman, George W. Cook, a Grand Army of the Republic veteran, we are the oldest organized ensemble of our kind in the state of Colorado. Known first as Cook’s Drum Corps., verbal history has it, that in 1931, as the number of Civil War veterans diminished, the Veterans of Foreign Wars sought our services and the name was changed to Cooks VFW Band and Drum Corps. In 1948, when the Department of Colorado designated us as their official band, our name became The VFW Band of Colorado.
While keeping with our military band heritage, the group has a two part mission of providing a place for a veteran musician to play in a band of our type, and as time permits, to represent the Veterans of Foreign Wars by providing performances at VFW functions, local and regional parades, civic ceremonies, neighborhood activities and the like. While our repertoire does include marches, we also perform other types of music that fit a concert band play list.
George W. Cook
George Washington Cook (November 10, 1851 - December 18, 1916) was a U.S. Representative from Colorado. Born in Bedford, Indiana, at the age of eleven Cook ran away from home and enlisted in the Fifteenth Regiment, Indiana Volunteer Infantry, in the Union Army and served as a drummer boy. He was transferred to the One Hundred and Forty-fifth Regiment, Indiana Volunteer Infantry, and served as chief regimental clerk. At the close of the Civil War, he attended the public schools, Bedford Academy, and Indiana University. He moved to Chicago in 1880 and entered the employ of the Louisville, New Albany & Chicago Railway. Cook moved to Leadville, Colorado, in 1880 and became division superintendent of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad and served as mayor of Leadville from 1885 to 1887. He moved to Denver in 1888 and became general sales agent for the Colorado Fuel &. Iron Co. and became department commander of the Grand Army of the Republic for Colorado and Wyoming in 1891 and 1892. He became an independent mining operator in 1893 and became Senior vice commander in chief of the Grand Army of the Republic in 1905 and 1906. He also Organized and commanded the Cook Drum Corps, of Denver. Cook was elected as a Republican to the Sixtieth Congress (March 4, 1907-March 3, 1909) but was not a candidate for renomination in 1908. He returned to Colorado and resumed mining operations, dying in Pueblo, Colorado, December 18, 1916. He was interred in Fairmount Cemetery in Denver.
From Wikipeidia, the free encyclopedia
And, this brief biography of George W. Cook appeared in The Washington Herald in 1908.
George W. Cook. Representative from Colorado, has the distinction of having been the youngest chief regimental clerk in the entire Union army. He was fourteen when he was placed in this position, which he filled for an Indiana regiment for eighteen months. Prior to becoming clerk, he had been a drummer boy for various Indiana regiments in the Army of the Cumberland. In order to become a drummer boy, he ran away from home when he was twelve. This was in 1863, and from then on till the close of the war he was a boy soldier in fact and deed as well as in name.
Representative Cook’s was a fighting family. His father, who was a lieutenant in the Thirteenth Indiana Cavalry, died of disease contracted while a soldier. His mother was a daughter of an ensign and lieutenant in the War of 1812, and his only brother, who died in the service of his country at the age of fifteen years, was a bugler in the father’s company.”
Courtesy of the Library of Congress. The Washington Herald, May 24, 1908, pg 7.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress. The New-York Tribune, Dec. 02, 1907, pg 1.
The Historic Cook Drum and Bugle Corp in the News
Anaconda Standard (Anaconda, Mont.), 11-11-1897
LIKES THE DRUM CORPS
George W. Cook Serves as a Drummer Boy
LEADVILLE’S GREAT BAND
He is the Organizer of the Corps Which Won the Commendation of the Pioneer Jubilee and of The G.A.R.
G. W. Cook, ex-mayor of Leadville, CO., is visiting in Butte. Mr. Cook is well known in Butte, particularly among the miners, a great many of whom were residents of Leadville at the time he was mayor of that city.
Mr. Cook is a man with a hobby, as he puts it himself, when speaking of one of the things he likes best in this world. It is the drum corps. And is the result of the experiences of his youth. Mr. Cook’s father was an officer in the union army during the war of the rebellion and he, then 12 years old, and a brother of 15 ran away from home and enlisted, he as a drummer boy and the brother as a bugler. The brother was killed in service, but Cook served through the war in the army of the Cumberland, first in the Fiftieth Indiana infantry and later in the 145th Indiana. Having beaten a drum throughout the war as a mere boy, it is not unnatural that the drum corps should be the hobby of his later life. He organized the Leadville drum corps which created such a furor at the Pioneer jubilee in Salt Lake last summer and later, when he moved to Denver, where he now lives, he organized the Cook Drum corps, which he took to the G.A.R. encampment at Buffalo last summer, and which was selected out of the 100 and more bands that were there to lead the grand parade in which 40,000 veterans took part.
The Minneapolis Journal (Minneapolis, Minn.), 08-16-1906
From "THE PARADE IN DETAIL"
Leading the fortieth national parade of the Grand Army came a platoon of Minneapolis mounted police…heralding the coming of the civil war veterans. The platoon was followed by the George W. Cook band and drum corps, a famous Denver organization maintained by George W. Cook, senior vice commander of the Grand Army ,… Playing martial music and led by the famous Cook girls’ drill corps, the members of the band, attired in red, white and blue uniforms, added a touch of color to the oncoming line and received the hearty applause of the spectators.”
The Cook Band and Drum Corps was mentioned in a May 5, 1903 New York Times article about a trip by President Theodore Roosevelt to Colorado.
