June can be bittersweet at Parker. For the seniors especially, they aren’t coming back, at least as students, so Parker honors them with, among other rituals, two bagpipe players, Jaime McCorry and a varying partner, marching around the field in kilts playing Parker’s alma mater.

This tradition dates all the way back to 1901, when Parker was founded. Back then, and until 1942, the last day of school ceremony was called “Field Day.” The day was filled with many more activities than the current Class Day, such as fifth grade girls dancing around a Maypole and each grade performing a tumbling stunt to honor the senior class. Each stunt was from a different culture. The first graders were Native-Americans, the fourth graders were Greeks, and the list of cultures for each grade goes on.

In 1942, however, that day became Class Day, and the tumbling turned into a Big Brothers and Big Sisters day, in which seniors spent all day with the younger children. Despite the shift, both events kept the ceremonial bagpipes, which play on through the afternoon while students and parents picnic on the field.

7th grade English teacher Kate Tabor did a research project a few years ago to try to find the reason behind the beginning of the tradition. “Lots of the original faculty were either Scots or Irish and had bagpipes in their culture,” Tabor said. “That was something they just included.”  

Over 110 years later, many students are still unsure how it came about. Out of 102 high school students, 93 don’t know why the bagpipes are a tradition at Parker. Principal Daniel Frank believes students should know why Parker’s traditions are the way they are. “It would be really great to offer a moment to educate everybody,” Frank said. “It adds joy and quality to a school event.”

The problem with trying to find the exact reason behind why the bagpipes started is that anyone who was alive to know why they started is no longer around. “There isn’t really a definitive ‘Oh, this is why we use bagpipes,’” Tabor said. “I think it just became something they used and stuck.”

Frank believes there is a special significance in the bagpipes that kept them playing each year since 1901. “I think the popularity of it and the ways in which students and teachers and parents liked it,” Frank said. “We very deliberately continued the tradition of having them playing.”

Regardless of how they started, it’s been some time since then, and now it’s more the tradition that draws the students and faculty as opposed to the sound. “I don’t think it’s about the sound or about what they’re wearing,” freshman Leila Sheridan, who has been at Parker since JK, said. “It’s about the whole ethics of having bagpipes open the school year and close the school year. They welcome the seniors.”

Freshman Denise Roman, who was new last year and has only heard the ceremonial bagpipes on Class Day once, was a little bit thrown off by the sound. “It was cool but a little weird,” Roman said. “I never heard anything like it before.  It was a totally new experience for me, but I enjoyed it.”

McCorry has been playing these events at Parker since she was a teenager in the mid 1970s. A few years ago Parker gave her an honorary diploma because she had been playing for so long.

The bagpipes, which can also be heard at Homecoming, hit the right note, for Frank. “It must be something about the majesty and the sound and the pride of seeing the bagpipe players stand up straight,” Frank said. “And this big, loud, engaging, resonant sound that captures people’s imagination.”