First chair in high school then I basically never played it again, other than a single family picnic several years back. Playing Gershwin solos in marching band was a lot of fun.

I still have my big Bach with the F valve, and my dad has his from high school as well, an Olds with an "octagon" slide - not really an octagon, too many sides, but also not a circle.

My grandfather was *good*, like, really really *good*. He was invited to play in some big band back in the day, may have been with Tommy Dorsey, I don't recall. My grandmother put the kibosh on that and he went back to engineering.

My nephew went to college for jazz trombone. Not a lot of work for jazz trombonists at the moment, though, and he's working at Chi-Chis and thinking about applying to one of the military bands.

The closest Aidan ever got to a Sousa march was singing 76 Trombones in Music Man...