DAVE FLYNN
2024 AD LEGACY AWARD WINNER

Nomination Letter:
Dave was a 7-year member of The Cavaliers, joining the snare line as a 15 -year-old and aging out as Drum Major for the 1981 season. With time away to start a family and develop his business career, Dave returned to the corps in the early 2000s as a member of the Board of Directors. His appointment to the Board came at a time when the organization began to understand that The Cavaliers needed to modernize their approach to leadership, fundraising, and management, while maintaining a high standard of performance excellence on the field.

Dave was the primary motivating force behind the creation of Green Thunder Percussion, a training and performance program for young men designed to re-localize the Cavaliers experience for Chicago-area performers and develop local members who could eventually find a spot in The Cavaliers. Knowing how sensitive the Board’s leaders were to financial risk, Dave and his wife Sue personally guaranteed Green Thunder’s operational budget if/when the program failed to pay its own way, and he was there as the Board member who the staff and members of GTP could look to for guidance and counsel as they developed GTP as a program and resource for The Cavaliers. The GTP program steadily grew in success in the WGI arena, eventually become so competitive that they moved into the most competitive levels of that activity, as the re-branded Cavaliers Indoor. The alums of GTP/Cavaliers Indoor include many members of The Cavaliers in the late 00s/early 10s, and leaders who have gone on to success at high levels both with The Cavaliers organization and with some of our partners in Drum Corps International.

Behind the scenes, Dave could be found lining up drivers for the summer tour (in the pre-charter days), which may have had a hand in shaping his understanding that The Cavaliers needed to develop from the “working Board” model of the 1950s-90s to a governance Board of Directors, with a large and diverse group of members bringing their business and upper-level management expertise to the organization. That describes the model the organization works with today, a time when the organization’s budget has grown to over $2 million per year, and the young people and adults tho work with the various performing ensembles have the tools they need to succeed. In summation, Dave understood that giving back is one of the core values of programs like The Cavaliers, and he took that commitment seriously, providing The Cavaliers with his very best efforts, his good judgment, and his steady leadership, qualities that are the marks of a the best of what The Cavaliers experience is designed to instill in its members.