Denley Loge and the enduring call of the Grizzly Band

 

For more than four decades, Denley Loge ’72 has returned to the University of Montana Homecoming Parade with his trombone in hand. He has marched, played and, more recently, ridden with the UM Alumni Band — part of a longstanding tradition that turns a familiar route through downtown Missoula into a rolling reunion.

“It’s just fun,” Loge said.

His ties to UM began in 1968. A high-school trombonist from North Dakota, Loge made his way to the University and continued in band, ultimately earning 33 music credits through ensembles and marching band while exploring other interests like rugby, intramural sports, hunting and, eventually, geography.

He graduated with the class of 1972 and completed student teaching at Sentinel High School in 1973. Road construction work, which he had taken up during summers, became his career. He worked on the construction of Lookout Pass, the road to Big Sky Resort and, briefly, Washington-Grizzly Stadium.

The work came with an emotional footnote. Before the stadium was built, the site included fields where Loge had played rugby. He had also marched on three different campus fields as the University’s facilities shifted over the years — another measure of how the institution and the city around it has changed during his lifetime.

Still, music remained the most durable thread. Loge joined the UM Alumni Band when it began 38 years ago and has missed only one Homecoming performance in 2011, when he traveled to New Zealand with the rugby team for the Rugby World Cup. In the mid-1970s, before the University had a marching band, he and other rugby players played from a trailer in the Homecoming Parade — the only band in the procession that year.

Marching band, he said, is more demanding than audiences realize. During his student years, rehearsals filled most weeknights, continued on Saturday mornings and required members to learn new music and formations nearly every week.

The amount of work and level of commitment is what people often overlook, Loge said.

These days, a troublesome knee has changed how he participates. Rather than marching the full route, Loge rides in a small electric bus provided by the St. Regis community, positioned among the Alumni Band so that musicians who cannot march can still play. The arrangement, now in its third year, has given him and others a way to remain part of the sound and spectacle.

For Loge, the parade is all about continuity: the practiced breath, the familiar school songs and the chance to find old friends once more in the same formation. He still keeps a trombone mouthpiece in his car to maintain the muscle strength required to play, a habit that once allowed him to join a street band in France while traveling with the rugby team.

The 2026 UM Homecoming Parade begins at 10 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 3. It will travel south on Higgins Avenue, cross the Beartracks Bridge and continue east on University Avenue to campus. This year’s parade is sold out for participants, but spectators are invited to line the route and celebrate the theme, “No Place Like Home.”

For Loge, the meaning is in the returning.

“Everybody knows in Helena, they know I’m a Griz,” he said. “That Montana rivalry — I think that’s part of why I make sure everybody knows.”