The U.S. Coast Guard Band will be staying at the military branch's New London service academy if a provision put forward by U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy is enacted.
Murphy said plans to move the 55-member band to Washington, D.C., where the other service academy bands are based out of, would be scrapped under a provision he included in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, which passed the Senate Appropriations Committee Thursday.
“Moving the Coast Guard band from New London to D.C. never made sense,” Murphy said in a statement. “Since its founding, the band has called New London home. Today marks an important step in our effort to make sure it stays this way.”
Murphy and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal wrote to top Coast Guard officials last fall when the possibility of a move was first raised and decried the idea calling the band "a vital part of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and the Connecticut community."
Suggestions were made previously, in 1976 and 1981, that the band relocate. Those initiatives were eventually scrapped.