I was visiting them a couple of days ago, and asked my Mom if she still had any or all of our old VHS collection of WGI Videos. I knew I had given her my collection years ago when I was moving and purging (and had put most of them on DVD), and realized that she may have purged them before their big move more than two years ago.
My Mom showed me TWO BOXES in their garage that held all of the VHS Video tapes of all of our color guard memories from the early 1980s through the mid-90s. I have a terrific collection on the standard WGI Finals for most of those years, but the collection my Mom kept is VERY special: she has Floor Tapes, WGI Prelims performances, Regional performances, and some entire CCGC Circuit Shows. She also has footage of rehearsals from when my parents used to fly out to wherever my sister and/or I were living and she would video tape our rehearsals.
I always knew that my parents were especially amazing and supportive of my sister and me. Not only did they support our interests while we were growing up, but they would drive us to all of our rehearsals and shows, come to each of our local competitions, travel to our competitions that were further away, and volunteer to help with sewing uniforms and flags. Once my sister and I were older, they supported our desire to move to different parts of the country to audition for different guards (they would even drive with us across the country and back!) and they would also come to visit us while we lived states away from home, and fly to some of the regionals to cheer us on, and they would always be there for every WGI that we ever competed in. Not only did they house several of our friends who needed to live locally to Santa Clara or San Jose (even when my sister and were living in other states!, but they even housed my entire guard and staff when we flew out from Madison, WI to San Jose, CA for a regional! That was about 50 people staying overnight at my parent's house!
Aside from all of that, my Mom was amazing at helping us build one of the most cohesive WGI video library around. Between the two of us, we had all the VHS tapes from 1982-1993 (and more) for most of Open/World Class. Even more impressive, we had somehow managed to acquire WGI Finals Floor Tapes for some years (Open/World and Scholastic) and even a couple of WGI Prelims tapes for a couple of years (only for the guards I was in or was teaching).
And on top of everything else, my Mom is a techie - she was more techie gadgets than most people, and holds onto older machines as long as they are still working. That means that not only did she save all of our old cherished WGI video tapes, but she also has the technology to convert them from VHS to DVD!!! That's AMAZING!!
So, when I was over at their house visiting last week, I sorted through all the videos and pulled out the really special ones that I know I don't already have in digital form: the floor tapes, the prelims tapes, and the all-season tapes that my Mom had put together of rehearsals, local shows, retreats, end of the year banquets, etc., Such special memories!
It took a little bit of doing, but my Mom was able to hook up her old VHS to DVD recorder, and we prioritized converting the shows that meant the most to me: The ones from when my Sister and I marched in Sparks and went to WGI in 1986 and 1987 (but didn't make finals), the floor tape of Miller's Blackhawks 1990 (when my sister and I marched together before she aged out) the floor tape of Anaheim Kingsmen 1991, the floor tape of State Street Review 1992, and the Prelims performance of State Street Review 1993, my age-out year.
My parents are away on vacation for a couple of weeks, so my Mom let me borrow and bring home her external DVD/CD drive. I found a application that will allow me to digitize the files from the DVD that she made me and convert them to mp4s (or other type of files) that I can save on Social Media and on my computer, the cloud, etc.,
I was crazy-geeky-happy when I realized we'd be able to digitize so many of these color guard treasures that mean so much to me. I'll be working on converting over all the shows that she has put onto DVD for me so far, and eventually, we'll convert more VHS to DVD.
Thanks, Mom! You're amazing!!
Box 1, Layer 1
Box 1, Layer 2
Box 2, Layer 1
Box 2, Layer 2
These are the VHS tapes that I pulled out to convert to DVD
My Mom's impressive set-up
Super Mom, converting memories to be saved and shared!!
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