Roma Lodge

A recently published book, Racine’s Horlick Athletic Field: Drums along the Foundries, by Alan R.
Karls (The History Press, 2014) gives an almost forgotten bit of history of Roma Lodge. The book
highlights how Horlick Athletic Field hosted drum and bugle corps shows that made the stadium a
landmark in southeastern Wisconsin. From archive recollections and painstaking records, the
author pieced together a history of Horlick Athletic Field that justifies the reverence that drum and
bugle corps have felt for the place for almost a century. Alan Karls is a fourth-generation Racine
native and was often in Horlick Athletic Field for high school football games, drum and bugle
corps shows and semi-professional football games. A member of the Racine Scouts and the Boys
of '76, his other drum and bugle corps credentials include instructor, judge and journalist.
In the book, Karls, wrote this about the Roma Lodge Drum and Bugle Corps:
Roma Lodge was a leading drum and bugle corps in Racine during the 1930s. It appeared in
Horlick Field many times at music festivals and for exhibitions, and it appeared at the Chicagoland
Music Festival and the World’s Fair, among other events. The unit disbanded around 1940 and sold its uniforms to the
Belle City drum and bugle corps, a new Racine drum corps that performed for a short time in the early 1940s. Roma
Lodge is an existing fraternal association formed by Racine residents of Italian heritage.
He also included this October 12, 1930 photograph, the original of which hangs in the Members Card Room. 

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