Bob Bone, executive director of Rome’s New Year’s Day Parade, talks with students before presenting a formal invitation on Wednesday, March 16, 2016, to Marshall University’s Marching Thunder to perform in Rome’s New Year’s Day Parade.
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — The 300 members of the Marshall University Marching Thunder have their New Year’s Day 2017 celebration plans set in stone after receiving an invitation Wednesday to a pretty colossal party in Europe for the holiday.
The entire band formally was invited Wednesday afternoon to perform in the New Year’s Day Parade in Rome, Italy, on Jan. 1, 2017.
Robert C. Bone, executive director of the parade, extended the invitation to the band during a short gathering in the band room in the Cam Henderson Center.
“It is the official celebration of the new year in Rome,” Bone said. “The parade is a big deal. It takes place at 3:30 in the afternoon, and it’s a daylight-to-nighttime parade. We start in the daylight and finish in the night, and it all takes place under the Christmas lights on the famous shopping streets of Rome, the Via della Conciliazione, the Piazza del Popolo and goes to St. Peter’s Square…
