Vermont’s Great Experiment

The call from his commanding officer came on a Sunday at the end of March, when Matthew Tatro was on his couch in front of the television. His life in small-town Vermont was already being reshaped by the coronavirus; for his usual job as a high-school music teacher, he’d been puzzling through how he could teach band remotely if and when the schools closed.

But now the governor was activating the National Guard, and Tatro, as a longtime guardsman, the bandmaster of the 40th Army Band, with 28 people under his leadership, had to mobilize himself and his fellow musicians to help get medical equipment to places in need around the state. Within days, the came down from Brigadier General David Manfredi at the Vermont National Guard’s Joint Operations Command: Tatro and dozens of other guardsmen with day jobs, including teachers, master’s students, and at least one dental hygienist,