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The Onalaska High School Marching Band traveled more than 1,000 miles for a 40-minute gig — a one-mile march down Constitution Avenue — but the memories will last a lifetime.

The band represented Wisconsin in the national Independence Day parade in Washington, D.C., suiting up on a hot and muggy July 4 and marching from Seventh Avenue to 17th, playing a medley of John Phillip Sousa songs along the way before a crowd estimated at 350,000.

“It was certainly the biggest crowd we’ve ever played for,” said band director Dawson Strutt, who said the band represented Wisconsin very well.

“The kids just did a great job in their performance,” Strutt said. “They looked great, sounded great and got a great reception.”

A big part of the reason the Hilltoppers enjoyed an enthusiastic crowd response, Strutt explained, is the band did some fancy footwork. Most bands marched in line the whole route, but the Hilltoppers threw in some parade maneuvers.

Roughly every fourth entry in the two-hour parade was a band, and Strutt said it was intriguing for the band members to see the wide variety of bands. One band, for example, came from Taiwan and was made up of all girls, while another 150-member band from Michigan was entirely composed of home-schooled students.

The parade also featured the giant cartoon character balloons famous from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.

“It was just a huge event that was kind of awe inspiring,” Strutt said.

What made the Hilltoppers’ performance especially amazing was the band’s relative youth. The band included incoming freshman who haven’t attended a day of high school yet, and during a recent band meeting, only five members of about 80 in attendance had drivers licenses so they could drive in the car pool.

The trip to and from Washington was undertaken aboard coach buses. “That in itself was a great bonding experience,” Strutt said. “It kind of forces you to get along and learn a little more about each other.”

The parade wasn’t the only part of the trip that inspired awe. The roughly 130 people who made the trip, which included 17 adults, also got to see all the monuments in D.C., listened to the National Symphony Orchestra play with accompanying vocals by Stevie Wonder, Vanessa Williams and others and watched the fireworks explode over the Washington Monument.

Probably the most moving part of the trip came when the group traveled to Arlington National Cemetery and got a chance to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns Monument. Joining Strutt in the wreath laying ceremony were senior drum majors Don Stein and Rachel Ringhand and Craig Bartos, a band parent and former military man who wore his “dress blues.”

“Memories, that’s what these trips are all about,” Strutt said. “It was just rather amazing and some of it is still sinking in.”

This year’s freshmen and sophomores will get to add one more big marching band memory to their high school years before they’re through. In January 2009, the band will play at the Outback Bowl in Florida.