Abilene ISD -

The Abilene High School marching band is in its 98th year in 2024 and carries the moniker of “The Oldest Marching Band in Texas.” And in those 98 years, it would be hard to find someone who loves or has loved the Eagle Band more than Micah Fambrough.

The 2020 AHS graduate doesn’t miss a halftime show at home games and rarely misses one on the road. Micah commits the performances, themes, and songs to memory.

Micah’s favorite instrument is the tuba, which he first became a fan of at six years old when the 2006 Veggie Tales movie “Gideon: Tuba Warrior” was released. Micah’s mother, Sarah, graduated from AHS in 1994 and is in her 26th year teaching at her alma mater. She said Micah went to all the games when he was growing up.

“Whenever the bands would come out, he would always look for the tuba,”  Sarah said of her son, who has never let his Autism diagnosis slow him down. “That’s the instrument he originally wanted to play, but when we went to try out instruments, the baritone fit him better. But because he loved that VeggieTales program, he made the correlation, and that’s when he said he wanted to play the tuba.”

Micah was part of the Eagle Band at Abilene High and, as a fourth-generation Eagle, continues to be a fan of both the Abilene High football team and the Eagle Band. The family was in the stands for the first two games of the 2024 season, and Micah has already made his feelings known about the band’s 2024 show, titled “The Space Between the Stars,” saying in an Aug. 31 Facebook post that it is his “No. 1 favorite show of all time.”

And he would know.

About one year ago, he began researching Eagle Band halftime shows, going back through social media photos and YouTube videos, and enlisting the help of AISD media production specialist Randy Cluck to come up with an archive of Eagle Band halftime shows. He was also helped by Abilene High yearbook sponsor Amber Via, who let Micah look through old yearbooks to find photos, names of shows, and other information.

Micah spent hours digging through YouTube videos, searching for and downloading videos, and adding donated videos from band alumni to add to his collection. He has found and gathered videos of every halftime show from 1995-2023, and he’ll soon add the 2024 show to his collection.

He began recording the shows himself after he graduated in 2020 as a way to stay connected to the band.

“I love being an artist and recording things,” said Micah, who was selected as Eagle Band Beau in Fall 2019. “And that’s also why I wanted to put all of these videos together.”

Once he had the videos and photos, he wanted to share what he found with others. With his family’s help, Micah assembled an exhibit and displayed it late July in the foyer of the Abilene High Auditorium. Each board in the exhibit had photos and a QR code linking back to a video from that year’s halftime show.

Sarah said the exhibit attracted 40-50 people, with Micah saying he could tell, “Everyone loved it.” Many of those in attendance were Eagle Band alums who could take a walk down memory lane, thanks to Micah’s work.

The Fambrough family has a special connection to the Eagle Band beyond Micah’s project. They live in a nearly 100-year-old house formerly occupied by Dr. Raymond T. “Prof” Bynum, who founded the Eagle Band on Oct. 15, 1926.

That connection and his love for the Eagle Band means Micah won’t stop adding to his collection, a project he calls his “life’s work.”

“The band started in 1926, and this is the 98th year of the marching band,” he said. “In two years, it will be the 100th anniversary. I know this year’s band – like the other 97 – and the bands in the future will be very proud of how they’ve performed.”