Nearly a century ago Fort Sill, like most Army installations, had a bandstand for parades and special ceremonies. Originally built on the parade field adjacent to the posts headquarters in 1911, it was later moved to a location on what was known as the “New Post.”
According to newspaper reports, the bandstand was destroyed by a storm in 1922. Commanders from as early as the 1980’s tried to get it rebuilt. According to Jeff Hirschfeld, Tulsa District Construction Engineer at Fort Sill, “ Somehow, circumstances just got in the way.”
When funding finally became available, Hirschfeld began a search for drawings, specifications or a picture to begin a design. After searching the post archives, files and museum with no luck it became a personal challenge to find a picture, drawing or something that would give him an idea of the original bandstand design and look. For a while, he began to doubt it had ever been rebuilt after the storm.
After spending several months searching, he set out on his own time pouring through the internet, newspapers, museums and even the Library of Congress and the National Archives for clues of how it looked.
“I would settle for anything that would give me an approximation of its size and design.” he said.
Available images would only a portion of the bandstand or lack detail.
During a visit to the Museum of the Great Plains in Comanche, Okla. , he and now retired, Corps employee Kim Shirley made contact with the museum’s head curator Deborah Anna Baroff. After explaining their plight and frustrations, Baroff mentioned the museum had images waiting to be digital archived filed on index cards.
Barroff took them to one of cabinets, opened a drawer and started thumbing through the cards. She found one that mentioned the Fort Sill Bandstand in its title. The card contained the location of a film negative dating back to the mid 1910s.
After retrieving the negative and holding it up to the light, Hirshfeld said it was better than they had hoped for. ”I was amazed by the quality of the picture,” he said. “With a print from the negative, I was able to pretty accurately reproduce the specifications by scaling the size of the steps and the persons in the photograph. Not only that but it also showed us its exact location on the post.”
Hirschfeld said, “In the end, this was one of the most interesting searches I have undertaken in my career. In reality, I knew that finding an image of a structure that only existed for 10 years on Fort Sill, Just years after Oklahoma became a state, was pretty slim. I don’t know exactly why I chose to embark on the great journey. However, I did find an image of three ladies enjoying a nice summer day on a bandstand that just happened to be on the bandstand I was looking for.”
Senior Architect David Palmquist, Fort Sill Resident Office, said about Hirschfield’s pursuit of the Bandstand, “Jeff was relentless in his research. He was like a pit bull. He wouldn’t quit in his search for evidence of the bandstand, and most of it on his own time.”
With drawings completed, construction only took a few months.