By O. Rufus Lovett

Whether she is familiar with it or now not, each woman who has ever dreamed of taking her position in a line of high-kicking dancers on a soccer box at halftime has been encouraged via the Kilgore collage Rangerettes, the world's first precision dance drill crew. based in Kilgore, Texas, in 1939-1940 through the incomparable Gussie Nell Davis, the Rangerettes have played for nationwide and foreign audiences, showing usually at occasions reminiscent of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and significant soccer bowl video games around the country, together with the recent Year's Cotton Bowl vintage in Dallas every year because 1951.

An icon of Americana, the red-white-and-blue clad Rangerettes have drawn the eye of diverse photographers and writers trying to comprehend the iconic charm of a gaggle that a few may view as anachronistic. O. Rufus Lovett, a good paintings photographer who has taught at Kilgore university for greater than thirty years, begun photographing the 'Rettes in 1989. His interpretive picture essay during this publication expresses his fascination with "the glamour of the Rangerettes' performances juxtaposed with the small-town surroundings, soccer turf, steel bleachers, chain-link fences, and asphalt and urban environment." In Lovett's masterfully composed images, the Rangerette performances captivate with their multiplicity of "shapes, styles, and designs."

While Lovett treats the 'Rettes as a creative topic, he additionally captures the esprit de corps that retains the women smiling even if they must march on icy pavement and activates their moms to put on T-shirts that proudly proclaim "Rette Mom." An affectionate, but unsentimental and sometimes irreverent portrait, Kilgore Rangerettes fantastically conveys the undying caliber of this particular tradition of younger American womanhood.