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Golden Glimpses Spring 2016
“I’m the luckiest lady in the world” “Seventy-six trombones led the big parade,” according to the 1962 movie, “The Music Man”. But in Sycamore, IL, Marlyn’s Majorettes led her town’s big Pumpkin Festival parade for more than 50 years. Meet Marlyn Lenschow Burkart, your Tri Sigma sister, who organized and inspired the Sycamorebased Marlyn Majorettes and Major Color Guard and Drum Corps. Marlyn retired her talented group following the Pumpkin Festival in the fall of 2014. The festival committee awarded her a plaque recognizing her role spanning more than a half century in the parade. In addition, alumni members of her organization returned from all over the country and even Germany to Sycamore to pay tribute to Marlyn, recalling their leader as a great inspiration in their lives and a second mom. The activities of Marlyn’s Corps extended beyond Sycamore parades. The Corps won more than 1,000 honors in world, national and state competition performances. In a newspaper article about Marlyn’s Corps final Sycamore appearance, she was quoted as saying, “I think I’m the luckiest lady in the world to have had all those people share their lives with me”. Marlyn says she thinks she started in parades when her mother was pregnant with her. In Junior High she started taking baton twirling lessons every weekend in Chicago, performing on TV on amateur hours and “Bozo’s Circus”. She started the Majorettes in Sycamore in the 1950’s
to bring the training opportunities to Sycamore where she has lived all her life. She said, “It’s a ‘we corps’, not a Marlyn corps”. Marlyn, who joined Alpha Beta in 1951 while attending Northern Illinois University, continues to offer baton lessons at her studio and remains active judging competition for the National Baton Twirling Association. Among her other accomplishments, Marlyn was named 2001 Corp Director of the Year, elected to the Baton Twirling Hall of Fame in 2002, given the Clifford Danielson Outstanding Citizen Award in 2002, led a Rifle Squad to Notre Dame University for world championship competition and served as a member of the Sycamore Arts Council.