BENEFIT: DANCE A TRIBUTE TO SEMO's MASON

In a joke passed down from one class of Golden Eagles to the next during LeRoy Mason's long tenure as the Southeast Missouri State University marching band's director, a man going to heaven hears beautiful music as he reaches St. Peter's Gate.

He peeks inside and sees someone on a podium conducting a band of angels. Who's that?" he asks St. Peter. "Oh, it's God," the saint says. "He thinks he's LeRoy Mason."

The truth in that joke is that Mason was a tough taskmaster who demanded the best from himself and his bands. His gruff bark through his ever-present megaphone meant someone wasn't getting the job done.

The result was a band that brought glory and national recognition to Southeast Missouri State during a 20-year period when its athletic teams weren't as successful.

But more than 20 years after his death on July 14, 1977, the Southeast scholarship named for Mason still is not fully endowed. Vicki Litzelfelner Abernathy, who was a majorette and drum major for the Golden Eagles from 1966 to 1971, has organized a benefit aimed at raising some of the approximately $3,600 still needed to fully endow the scholarship at $10,000.

The scholarship, which is for music students actively involved in the university's's music programs, has been awarded through the years but not at the level typical of the university's estimated 230 scholarships.

When the scholarship was established in 1977, the university did not have a minimum endowment requirement. The current $10,000 minimum endowment yields a $500 annual scholarship.

The '60s benefit dance will be held at 6:30 p.m. April 16 at the Show me Center. Entertainment will be provided by Bob Kuban and the In-Men, a band that frequently performed for Southeast events during the 1960s and 1970s.

The $15 tickets are available at Shivelbine's, Schnucks and Disc Jockey Records in Cape Girardeau and at the Style Shop and Super Styles in Jackson.

Reserved tables also are available by calling Abernathy at 243-0028. The cost of the band is being donated anonymously, so almost all the proceeds will go toward the endowment. Films of Golden Eagles performances will be shown.

Abernathy walks with the help of a cane now due to the effects of diabetes, but she was the high-stepping drum major when the Golden Eagles gave their biggest performance to date, the 1971 Super Bowl halftime show. She recalls the excitement of being in the runway just before the start. "When he said, Vicki, take them out, I thought, Oh my God, how do I blow this whistle?"

The Jackson High School product says Mason scouted majorettes like football coaches evaluate athletes. "You had to be 5-7 1/2 before he would look at you," she said. He also required them to put 2-inch heels on their boots. Abernathy was 5-9, but she also was one of 200 girls who tried out for majorette in the fall of 1966.

She was so excited when she was chosen that she fell down the stairs racing to tell her mother, Belle.

Mason took over at Southeast in 1956 after serving as director of music for the Jackson schools. His first band had 37 members. By the time he retired in 1977, he had built the 170-member-strong band into one of the country's premier marching units.

He was known for creating the "marching marquee," a moving formation that spelled out words. He got the idea from seeing lighted letters move across an advertising display in a Cape Girardeau jewelry store.

Besides the Super Bowl, his bands also played the Pro Bowl, Gov. Warren Hearnes' inauguration and numerous St. Louis Cardinals and Kansas City Chiefs halftimes.

His bands gave many small-town students an opportunity to travel to places they'd never been and taught the members how to excel, Abernathy said, ticking off the names of Golden Eagles she knows who went on to successful careers.

"He had such an impact on every one of his students," she said.

"Life is kind of like a marching band: You do the twists and turns and hope everything turns out OK."