In The Mood for Swing

by Hannah Wolfson

Locked in a vault of the Page County State Bank in Clarinda, Iowa, (pop. 5,690) is a treasure from America’s musical past: the brass trombone played by Glenn Miller in the 1940s. This priceless instrument may someday be on permanent display in a museum honoring the famous bandleader and the music of the Big Band era.

The museum is still in the planning stages, but the musical legend already is celebrated in Clarinda, where Alton Glen Miller (he later changed his name) was born on March 1, 1904. The small frame house where Miller spent his first three years has been restored and opened to the public and local residents have established a scholarship fund for young musicians. And every June, hundreds of Miller buffs flock to Clarinda to celebrate the music he made famous.

“His music is appreciated all over the world,” says Marvin Negley, president of the Glenn Miller Birthplace Society. “People who are in the area just continually stop by, or people make trips to come here.”

People who attend the Glenn Miller Festival can hear songs such as In the Mood, Chattanooga Choo-Choo, and Pennsylvania 6-5000 performed on the lawn of the Page County Courthouse. The courthouse was completed in 1887, two decades before Miller’s parents, Elmer and Mattie Lou, left Clarinda with their two sons to homestead in rural Nebraska.

It would be three more decades before Miller’s music took the nation by storm. During World War II, at the height of his career, Miller joined the U.S. Army Air Corps, where he formed the Glenn Miller Army Air Force Band and shipped out to England to play concerts and radio broadcasts to help the war effort.

Amid the Allied advance, the group was assigned a Christmas tour of Europe. On Dec. 15, 1944, Miller boarded a transport plane to Paris to make arrangements for the band, leaving behind the other members and his precious trombone. The plane disappeared somewhere over the English Channel and Miller was never seen again.

For years, Clarinda’s connection to Miller also was lost, but the connection was rediscovered in 1976 when the town celebrated the nation’s Bicentennial.

Looking for a way to honor the town’s own heritage, the local Lions Club and Chamber of Commerce organized a concert of Miller’s music on the lawn of his boyhood home. The concert proved so popular that it was made an annual event and led to the formation of the Glenn Miller Birthplace Society, which now has 1,700 members worldwide.

Yet the birthplace itself remained under private ownership until 1989, when Miller’s only daughter, Jonnie Dee Miller, bought the home and donated it to the newly formed Glenn Miller Foundation. Miller decided to have it restored to look as it did when her father lived there.

“I think she felt that that’s where the Clarinda history was—in 1904,” says Arlene Leonard, secretary of the Glenn Miller Birthplace Society.

Soon after reconstruction began on the home, Miller’s former band mate, trombonist Jimmy Priddy, donated Miller’s trombone—one of two he left behind when he flew to Paris—to the foundation.

The horn is locked away most of the year for security, but it will be exhibited once again this year during the Glenn Miller Festival from June 12-15. The festival will feature Big Band era music by seven military and civilian groups.

And if Clarinda residents get their way—and raise $1.5 million—the trombone will be on permanent display when the Glenn Miller Museum opens in 2005. If that happens, Clarinda residents will be planning a celebration to beat the band.

Hannah Wolfson is a freelance writer in Orange City, Iowa.

first appeared: 5/11/2003