Baton Rouge, Louisiana — For the past year, 66-year-old Kent Broussard of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has been marching toward a dream. It’s a dream he’s had since he was a young child and first saw the Louisiana State University Tiger Marching Band and hoped he would someday play tuba for them.
But that day never came. Eventually Kent became an accountant, started a family, and aged out of the opportunity, or so he thought.
“No, I wasn’t going to do that,” Kent told CBS News of joining the marching band. “I wasn’t going to play for the LSU band when I was 50.”
But now, retired at age 66, he thought maybe he could give it another shot. At least that is what he told his wife, Cheryl.
“At first I was like, ‘Do they have like a senior band?’” Cheryl told CBS News. “I mean, I wasn’t sure what he was exactly talking about. And it was the real band.”
And so, this retired accountant went back to school, just in the hopes of making the band. Even though he had played tuba as a child, he had completely forgotten his training.
So he relearned and retrained for what was to be a very competitive audition process.
Simon Holoweiko, the LSU Marching Band director, told CBS News he didn’t cut Kent any slack.
“No, there are no breaks when you come here,” Holoweiko said. “…And we follow that process to get the best possible group we can.”
Which is why Kent was never really expecting to make the cut, and why he was thrilled when he did.
Kent is now the oldest person in the band by 41 years. His first game is Saturday when the LSU football team hosts the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs. And he hopes his little dot on the field will punctuate the importance of high stepping out of your comfort zone.
“Try it,” Kent said. “The only thing you can do is fail. You’re only failure is not trying.”
Steve Hartman is a CBS News correspondent. He brings viewers moving stories from the unique people he meets in his weekly award-winning feature segment “On the Road.”
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