Frankfort Brass Band to play at St. John's UCC Mokena

The Frankfort Brass Band will play at 7 pm Dec. 13 in the sanctuary at St. John’s United Church of Christ (UCC), 11100 First Ave., Mokena. The Band will play a number of seasonal and patriotic songs to benefit a UCC based mission -- Back Bay Mission in Biloxi, MS, which has programs designed specifically to help homeless and underprivileged veterans in the Gulf region. Admission for the concert is free, but St. John’s and the Brass Band will take a free-will offering during the concert to benefit the Mission’s initiatives for homeless and underprivileged veterans.


St. John’s and its members have supported Back Bay Mission for years by sending groups of volunteers annually to work on Mission housing projects that benefit homeless and underserved Gulf residents. When Kim Siegers, the church’s music director, heard about the Mission’s new initiative for homeless veterans, she contacted key Brass Band coordinators to see if band members would be willing to participate in this joint venture.


The Band can trace its roots to 1897, when it was organized to play patriotic tunes for events in the Frankfort area. It existed for roughly 30 years before disbanding, but was reborn in 2005 when the director of the Frankfort Historical Society, John Herder, took an interest in the band’s history.


Currently Frankfort’s Brass Band is one of the busiest bands in the area, according to Mr. Herder. It is the performing band for Honor Flight Chicago, which conducts trips for WWII veterans to Washington , DC, to view the World War II Memorial. The band also performs several times each year in local churches and is frequently called upon to perform at functions that honor military service men and women. True to its original American type brass band instrumentation, the Band features just one clarinet, a practice often followed in 1890 brass bands.


In Biloxi, Back Bay Mission works to help veterans via its Supportive Services for Veteran Families (SSVF) and HomePort programs. SSVF provides case management and temporary financial assistance to homeless and at-risk veterans, including homelessness prevention and rapid rehousing of those who are already homeless. Via a partnership between the Mission and the U.S Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), HomePort provides immediate housing and supportive services to homeless and disabled veterans. The Mission supplies housing for these veterans while the VA works to address the underlying causes of their homelessness. The HomePort facility is currently a duplex and the Mission plans to add six more units in 2014.


For more information about the concert, Back Bay, St. John’s or the Frankfort Brass band, please call St. John’s UCC in Mokena at 708-479-5123 during regular business hours and leave a message for Steve Hoblin.