Battle Ground High School band director Greg McKelvey has appeared in more than 30 Grand Floral Parades, but this year was extra special as the grand marshal

Paul Valencia
ClarkCountyToday.com

Greg McKelvey was in a new position Saturday at a very familiar place.

There he was, once again, participating in one of the greatest spectacles in the region, the Grand Floral Parade, only this time he was the man of honor for the event.

Greg McKelvey, longtime band director for Battle Ground High School, was the grand marshal of the famous parade that is televised nationally.

“It was kind of wild,” McKelvey said Sunday, a day of rest after a long, fun Saturday that included a parade and then a party at his home with the Battle Ground band.

“This is happening,” McKelvey said of his thoughts as he opened the parade and then was driven on the parade route in a convertible car, with his wife Connie by his side. “You get to certain spots (on the route), and they’re announcing you and some of your achievements. That felt good.”

The Grand Floral Parade is the main event of the Rose Festival in Portland. Through the years, there have been many famous grand marshals, including Roy Rogers, Leonard Nimoy, Terry Baker, and Brandon Roy, plus a number of local standouts, as well. This year, organizers wanted to honor a man who had brought his bands to perform in this parade more than 30 times.

McKelvey is retiring after this academic year.

“In talking to the Rose Festival, they knew this was my last year and they wanted to honor me,” McKelvey said. “They figured this was the best way to do it. The reality is I never set out for personal rewards. My goal is to always have the band sound good. When they sound good, I feel like that’s good enough for me. I never sought individual awards.”

He paused for a second or two, contemplating.

“That being said, of all the awards that I have won, this would probably rank as the biggest one, to be named the grand marshal of the parade and to be in the car with my wife. That was great,” he said.

Funny enough, McKelvey figured it was, at best, a joke, or, at worst, a scam when he first got the call from Rose Festival officials.

“My first thought, this must be a prank,’ McKelvey said. “I started to hang up.”

He then thought maybe it was someone saying he won something but first, he would have to contribute $100 or some amount in order to receive the prize.

“At the end of the (school) year, as a band director, you’ve got all these performances. You don’t have time to deal with any foolishness,” he explained.

Before he disconnected the call, though, he decided to keep listening. 

“I realized it wasn’t a prank. This was real,” McKelvey said. 

Last month, Rose Festival organizers came to Battle Ground High School and made a formal announcement. 

“The whole experience was really great,” McKelvey said.

McKelvey first brought a band to the Grand Floral Parade in 1979, when he was a young band director for Jackson High School in Portland. Home run king Hank Aaron was the grand marshal that year.

A few years later, Jackson closed, and McKelvey moved to Wilson High School, also in Portland. He brought those bands to the parade, as well.

In 1996, McKelvey became the band director at Battle Ground. He first brought the Tigers to the Grand Floral Parade in 1997, and the band has been a constant.

That band — his band — was there Saturday, too. In fact, the Tigers marched right behind Greg and Connie. 

The band and Greg might have been too close together, in fact. Greg McKelvey said he caught himself lapsing back into band director mode, not grand marshal, when his band was getting close to the judges.

“I was trying to give her signals on what to do,” McKelvey said, referring to his assistant Danielle Armstrong, who was leading the band on Saturday. “Are the lines straight? How are the horn angles? You can’t see when you’re way up front. I had to let go and realize, ‘Hey, you’ve got to let them do it.’”

Music got a hold of Greg McKelvey when he was in the seventh grade, living in Richmond, Calif.

He described himself as “horrible” at first. He even got teased by other band members for his lack of talent.

“I put my foot in my mouth and I said, ‘Next year I’m going to be better than all of you guys.’ I took the horn home, and I practiced,” McKelvey said. 

He made good on that promise.

“I was not only better than the people who were my age, I was better than people who had been playing two, three years longer than me,” he explained. “I fell in love with it.”

He also came from a sports family. His father, Eural McKelvy — yes, a different spelling due to an error on Greg’s birth certificate — was a Harlem Globetrotter, and also was drafted in baseball by the St. Louis Cardinals.

Eural once told Greg that Greg’s height — he is 6-foot-7 — gave him no advantage when playing the saxophone.

In fact, Greg earned a basketball scholarship to Warner Pacific University in Portland. By the time he graduated, his passion, and his career, would be in music, not athletics.

Years later, when Eural came for a visit and watched Greg’s band perform, he told his son that he had made the right decision.

Now, here is Greg, in front of a parade that has meant so much to him as a band leader. This year, he led that parade.

“Let the parade begin,” he said to officially start the day.

Oh, and the experience lasted even a little longer than expected. With about two blocks left on the route, the car he was riding in broke down. Greg and Connie walked the rest of the way.

“It was a great experience. I had a lot of friends on the parade route who were yelling for us,” McKelvey said. “We had a great time.”