John Yesulaitis

Major John Francis Yesulaitis served with the U.S. Air Force Band for seventeen years and was the first officer-in-charge of the Strolling Strings. Following graduation from the Ernest Williams School of Music in New York, 1n 1936 he enlisted in the U.S. Army Band, playing French horn, graduating from the Army School of Music in 1943 as a warrant officer band leader. He conducted the 77th and 7th Infantry Division Bands, and spent two years in the combat zones of the Pacific Theater of Operations. Yesulaitis was assigned to the U.S. Army Air Corps Band at Bolling Air Force Base in 1946, where he was commissioned as a captain in 1951. When the Strolling Strings formed in 1954, he was the officer-in-charge and contributed greatly to The Air Force Band's "Serenade in Blue" radio broadcast mission of the 1950s and early '60s. The Band's Serenade In Blue program was carried by nearly 2,500 radio stations worldwide, and the original programs are still being aired. In 1963 Yesulaitis was promoted to major and assigned to lead the 505th Air Force Band of the Midwest at Chanute Air Force Base, Illinois. Upon his retirement from the Air Force in 1964 he became director of bands at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, where he was fondly known as "Major Y." He retired from UNC in 1989.