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The soldier�s coffin, with an American flag draped on top, is carried by two of his best friends, most likely fellow servicemen who served in the same battalion as the deceased hero. They lower the coffin to the ground and proceed to carefully fold the flag into a triangle, which they then present to the deceased man�s widow.
All this is done in total silence.
The mourners raise their lowered heads and wipe tears from their eyes. They know what is coming next, and, arching their necks, they strain to seek out the man with the golden bugle who will stand and play the most solemn version of �Taps� an aching heart has ever heard. But no man rises.
Instead the man�s friends grab a boom box from beneath a chair, and with the click of a button a muted version of �Taps� is belted out in stereo, each of the 24-notes crackling from the weathered tape of the cassette.
In a speech given to journalism students at Northwestern�s Medill School of Journalism Thursday, Tom Day, founder of Bugles Across America, a volunteer organization dedicated to providing live buglers for military funerals, said that this scene is the sad reality for many of our nation�s war veteran�s interments. Day, a veteran himself who now works for the Illinois State Lottery, said that everyday in America close to 1,600 veterans pass away, many of which receive the same boom box treatment for their funerals.
�There are just not enough [buglers] to go around,� Day said, although he did add that his organization is growing rapidly and already has 1,200 members representing all 50 states.
Add to that the 500 military personnel who have been doing their best to attend as many of their fallen compatriots� funerals as they can, and Day hopes that analog trumpeters will soon be a thing of the past.
The playing of Taps at a military funeral is a tradition nearly as old as the country itself. Daniel Butterfield, a Civil War general developed a personal set of bugle calls to be played during battle in order to send messages to his men in the heat of combat. Eventually he commissioned a soldier with a musical background to come in and tweak one his calls until it sounded more pleasant to the ear, and thus Taps was born. Over time, the heavy tune became the sad and sober song to honor all military dead.
Day started his organization in May 2000 in the basement of his Berwyn, IL, home, after hearing his friend�s recount of his war-veteran father�s funeral, an experience similar to the one described above. Day assembled a list of people he knew who could play the bugle and recruited them to appear at military funerals in the surrounding area. He also enlisted the help of a friend and took his project online, creating a Web site for people around the country to join the ranks. Day says his buglers range in age from 12 to 88 and in profession from homemaker to accountant to high school student.
�We�re not looking for any glory,� Day says. �We�re just looking to honor those who had their moments of glory when they served in the United States Army.�
