USHS Wind Ensemble and Symphonic Band

The 2023-2024 USHS Symphonic Band and Wind Ensemble continue to be the premier instrumental ensembles at Upper Sandusky High School.  Each year, these ensembles extend our tradition of excellence in performance.  

On February 3, 1943, the S.S. Dorchester, an American troop transport vessel, sank in the icy waters off the coast of Greenland, the victim of a German U-Boat. Of the 904 men aboard, 605 were lost. Among those who perished were four army chaplains, each of a different faith, each called to the same duty. The testimony of the survivors tells the story best: "As overcrowded lifeboats capsized, as rafts drifted away empty and men milled around the deck on the ragged edge of panic, the only fragment of hope came from these four men...and when the life jackets were gone, they gave away their own." As the survivors swam away, they remember the chaplains standing, their arms linked, braced against the slanting deck. They were praying words in prayer in Latin, Hebrew and English, addressed to the same God. "The Light Eternal," based on the well-known hymn, "God of Our Fathers," is a reflective work that musically recounts this magnificent story.