I missed the boat recently when I wrote about Fargo native Josh Lies playing for the U.S. Air Force Band in President Ronald Reagan's Washington funeral ceremonies. I forgot about his sister, Kirsten.
Kirsten Lies-Warfield, 32, a 1990 Fargo North graduate, also played in the funeral. She plays trombone in the 99-piece U.S. Army Band, which led the funeral procession down Constitution Avenue to the steps of the Capitol.
Lies-Warfield is on her third hitch in the Army Band, which totals 250 with all its support staff in Fort Myer, Va., on the boundary of Arlington National Cemetery.
She's been playing trombone since she was 12. She appropriated her father's trombone when she left for college at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis.
"Art had to get a new one," she recalls. "I took his with me to college." Father Art Lies was the band director at Ben Franklin Junior High School for 21 years.
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"It (the Reagan funeral) was the hardest mission I've done in the band," says Lies-Warfield, who joined the band on Jan. 5, 1999. "It was 90 degrees. Because it was so high profile and there were so many people involved, we ended up being on our feet (in wool uniforms) for so long and were fighting dehydration. We stood in place for 45 minutes at parade rest before we even stepped off."
Lies-Warfield, who has a master's degree in music from Indiana University and is working on her doctorate of musical art at Indiana, says how the band looks is almost as important as how it sounds.
"We have to look good and keep our instruments in good shape," she says. Band members were decked out in their special ceremonial uniforms for the Reagan funeral. She says nine trombonists march in the band's front row. "We have to so we don't hit other band members with our slides."
Lies-Warfield, an E-6, has been married to Platteville, Wis., native Patrick Warfield for 10 years. They met at Lawrence University and own a townhouse south of Alexandria, Va.
She says she loves her job and just enjoys being able to play the trombone.
"The competition for membership in the band is so stiff, in part because the big metropolitan orchestras and bands have so much financial difficulty. We're real stable and don't get moved around like the rest of the Army."
Expensive nosebleed
James Petrowitz of West Fargo says he's suffering from sticker shock after being billed $1,025.85 for a nose bleed, which he says took fewer than five minutes to stop in the emergency room at Innovis Hospital.
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Welcome to the world of health care's high costs.
Petrowitz, who runs a bulldozer for Municipal Industrial Contractors in Moorhead, drove to the ER after failing to stop the nose bleed on his own. ER personnel got it stopped in no time.
He says he received a bill for $207.50 from the doctor and $818.35 from the hospital. He's out of pocket on the bill because he hasn't worked at his job long enough to qualify for the health insurance plan.
Petrowitz says he protested to no avail. He says it will take lots of hours on his bulldozer to clear that bill.
Readers can reach Terry DeVine at (701) 241-5515 or tdevine@forumcomm.com
