By Brian Trompeter
Donald Paul Francisco brought energy and enthusiasm to bear Feb. 6 when he performed for Our Savior Lutheran Church and School students at the Woman’s Club of Arlington.
Dressed in Revolutionary War garb, complete with ruffled white shirt, blue bicorn hat and long-haired wig, the fife-and-drum expert spoke for about an hour and kept the students engaged throughout.
“You can learn a lot of neat lessons through music,” he told the youths. “We all have our part to play.”
The 57-year-old U.S. Army veteran asked the group to sing along to classics such as “Amazing Grace,” march in line up and down the hall’s center aisle, answer his historical quizzes and pound out beats on snare and bass drums.
“Play with confidence,” he told a girl who was tapping tentatively at a drum. “Ignore my razzle-dazzle.”
Francisco is a history interpreter and resident fifer at George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens, where he informs visitors about the importance of music during the American Revolution. Those enslaved at Mount Vernon also used music to send coded messages and prayers, he noted.
“When I do music, I kind of time travel,” he said. “It does connect cultures.”
Artist Archibald Willard immortalized a fifer and two drummers in his famous painting “The Spirit of ’76.” Military musicians, like medical personnel and chaplains, are considered noncombatants, and warring parties are not supposed to shoot at them, although it sometimes happens, Francisco said.
Music not only provided entertainment during that era, but was a vital means of directing troops on the battlefield amidst the yells, gunfire and cannon blasts. Music requires valuable traits such as persistence, practice, discipline and teamwork, he said.
“It is important for you to know your job and do it,” Francisco said. “Then everything comes together as a whole.”
Francisco provided a short description of the founding of each military service branch, listed their Latin mottoes and played their marches.
The students could identify many of the musical numbers Francisco played, from “Kumbaya” and “Three Blind Mice” to “Ode to Joy” and John Philip Sousa’s “The Washington Post March.”
Woman’s Club of Arlington member Sandy Newton worked at Mount Vernon for 32 years and met Francisco there. He seemed an ideal choice to give a presentation to the club during Black History Month, she said.
“He’s so talented!” Lewis said.
Francisco plays a variety of flutes, fifes, penny whistles and panpipes, and has collected them for about four decades. He brought dozens to the presentation, including some stored neatly in what appeared to be a gardener’s tool belt.
Some of the instruments decidedly were novelties. Francisco played flutes constructed from a garden hose, crutch, drumstick and walking stick. He also belted out a few discordant notes from a World War II-era bugle, and noted how he had played the clarinet and saxophone briefly because he didn’t like the reed.
Francisco augmented his presentation with a slide show about music in American history and included some photos of him with celebrities, such as Jay Leno. He recalled playing for Nelson Mandela in the early 1990s and performing for then-Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth II.
A New Orleans native, Francisco enlisted in the U.S. Army at age 17 in the summer of 1983, shortly after graduating from high school. He later graduated from the Armed Forces School of Music in Norfolk and served with the 5th Infantry Division Band in Fort Polk, La., and the 8th U.S. Army Band in Seoul.
His last post before retiring as a sergeant first class after 30 years of active duty was with the U.S. Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Arlington. He still can belt out push-ups and give orders with the clarity of a ringing bell.In addition to his duties at Mount Vernon, Francisco performs at schools, nursing homes, assisted-living facilities and other venues, and ministers in music as a deacon at International Calvary Church in Springfield.
Francisco and his wife of 33 years, South Korea native Grace Kang Francisco, have two sons, Samuel and Jonathan.
