Mike Brouner was one of the three Brouner boys who marched in the Madison Junior Scouts in the 1960s. The story goes that Mike showed up one day (he was about 9 at the time) with his new student model cornet at the Scouts’ rehearsal at the old Olbrich Park site. They told him to come back in a couple years. "He was just the saddest little boy you ever saw," Mike’s Mom says. "They told him he had to be at least 11 years old and a second-class Scout to join the drum and bugle corps." Two years seemed an eternity to him, so she got him private lessons, and the rest is more drum corps lore.

He did come back a couple years later. Mike (soprano 1965-66 and drum major 1967-68) desperately wanted to march in the big corps, but his family moved away from Madison. All the way to the West Coast and Seattle. Still loving drum corps, he marched with the Seattle Shamrocks and Imperials. But as with all of us, he was always a Scout. He was cheering in the stands at Camp Randall as the Madison Scouts Alumni Reunion Project performed at the DCI semi-finals in 2006.

Mike was a founding baritone in Seattle Brass Attack!, the all-age brass ensemble formed a couple years ago to support the Seattle Cascades and the Northwest Youth Music Association. He always came to rehearsals with his Madison Scouts cap on. His younger brother Tony says of Mike, “What we can all take away from knowing him is the knowledge that love springs only from love. People were happy to see him because he was happy to see them. He helped people feel good about themselves and their lives.”

Recently, Mike had made a career change, taking up the maintenance and repair of musical instruments. Something right up his alley. Early last Saturday morning, Mike died of a massive heart attack.

Mike Brouner was born in Madison on September 22, 1954. He is survived by his wife Josephine, whom he married in 1982; his older brother Dennis of Puyallup, WA; younger brother Tony of Olympia, WA; younger sister Mary of Chelan, WA; and daughter Lauren Hendrix, who’s working on her masters in music at North Texas State University in Denton. At his family’s request and with the encouragement of the Madison Scouts, Seattle Brass Attack! played “You’ll Never Walk Alone” at his funeral mass. In lieu of flowers, the family asked that remembrances be made in his name to the Madison Scouts.