"The Pelican Parade" is dated 1928, indicating that it likely made its debut in the fall of that year when the PMHS band first began playing at football games.  As reported in the 1929 Pelican yearbook:  “Last fall, the band, a new organization in the school, made its debut at some of the football games. It has rapidly gained in popularity among the students and with outsiders as well. Uniforms for the members were purchased early in the spring and made their appearance at the first home baseball game. They add greatly to the looks of the musicians, and provide a touch of color that is lacking in most school bands.”  

"The Pelican Parade" was sung at high school football games into the 1950s. The classes of the 1940s knew it well and sang it enthusiastically (from memory!) at their decade class reunion in 1990.   Listen to a video of that reunion and you may think it is a bunch of teenagers singing; in fact is was a group of people in their 70s.  "The Pelican Parade" seems to have fallen out of use by about 1958.   (A random survey of alums from the 1960s have no memory of it.)  

In a recent conversation with the Town Historian, PMHS Band Director, Campbell Whitford, PMHS '62,  recalled that during his school years, the band played the music to "On Wisconsin" as the school's fight song at football games.  (Eastchester used the same song, making it comical when the schools played each other and the bands would play the same song after scoring.)   After Mr. Whitford became the band director in 1972, he happened upon a version of the Pelican Parade written for orchestra.  He wrote a new arrangement for the band and re-introduced it at PMHS.  It was again re-introduced in 2021 at the Centennial Celebration of PMHS.

Whatever became of Jordan Smith?

On the 25th anniversary of the writing of "The Pelican Parade" in 1953, then Town Historian, Ed Brown tracked down Jordan Smith.  He was married by then to another Pelhamite from the same PMHS graduating class, Elsa Wolfe (PMHS 1929).  They had two daughters and were living at 29 High Street in East Williston, Long Island.  Smith was working as Procurement Officer at the United Nations, but he reported in a letter (which remains in the Pelham Town Historian collection) that he was still playing the violin and writing music, “for fun, for pleasure and for the indescribable and unique thrill, which comes from hearing something performed which is your brain child.”  He reported having one piece published, another recorded on a Victor record and that he had sold several songs to Republic Pictures “one of which was used in the last picture Roy Rogers made for Republic.”  Although the pieces are not identified in his letter, the following songs written by Smith have been discovered:

In 1947, Jordan co-wrote the music for a song called “Jenny Kissed Me” played by the Delta Rhythm Boys and recorded by RCA Victor. 

The piece that Smith said was purchased for a Roy Rogers film was called "Beyond the Great Divide" and can be heard in the background at the very end of a 1951 movie titled "Pals of the Golden West."  (Fast-forward toward the end to 53:33 to find where Smith's music starts.)

In Smith’s 1953 letter he conveys a sentiment that is still found among PMHS alums:

“I’ve been turning in my mind the idea of writing to Mr. Fairclough [Principal] at PMHS suggesting that I try to organize a 25 year re-union for the class of one-nine-two-nine!  It would be good to see my classmates again – it’s a funny thing that I’ve never had the desire to attend a college reunion – but I’d sure like to go back to the high school. Those four years, in retrospect, mean more to me than college ever will.”

On the 100th anniversary of the opening of PMHS, the Town Historian located Jordan Smith's daughter and, at a meeting in 2022 in Babylon, New York, she opened up her family albums and shared more about Jordan Smith and his life-long devotion to music: