Free Republic

Marc Garcia is a trumpet player who moonlights as a bugler at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery. He plays taps at the end of graveside services. If you have ever been to such a service, you know that the haunting notes of the melody provide an emotional end to the event. Garcia contacted me recently to say that he and his fellow buglers have been replaced by a battery-operated bugle. He wrote in an email: “When I sound live taps, I put all my spirit and soul into all 24 notes that I play, and that’s the same spirit and soul...

LOGANVILLE, Ga. — A Georgia mother hid her two 9-year-old twins and shot an intruder, Paul Ali Slater, several times during a home invasion on Friday, according to multiple media reports. The Loganville mother said she didn’t initially answer when someone knocked on her door around 1 p.m. Friday. When the visitor began repeatedly ringing the doorbell, she called her husband at work, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. He then dialed 911 and his 37-year-old wife gathered their 9-year-old twins and hid them in a crawlspace inside the home. According to the report, the intruder then forced his way...

Looking for Bugler to play TAPS for Veterans WWII organization on August 26th at Embassy Suites, Crystal City at about 10 PM. Please respond to rosemania@mindspring.com

BATH, N.Y. - It began with three haunting notes from a teenage girl. A second bugler, about 100 yards down the road, picked up the tune. And then a third. More than 850 buglers, trumpeters and other horn players fanned out Saturday along 41 miles of roads in rural western New York and performed a cascading rendition of taps to highlight the scarcity of buglers at veterans' funerals. The 24-note melody started up at Woodlawn National Cemetery in Elmira, overlapped from one instrument to the next as it reverberated through a string of small towns from Painted Post to Campbell...

HAMILTON TOWNSHIP, N.J. - For retired Army 1st Sgt. Richard J. Pinter, playing taps at military funerals is his way of helping the nation give its final salute to veterans. After 38 years of playing taps, the man known as "The Lone Bugler" is all too aware that there are service members who never received the recognition — and the thought leaves him choking back tears. "Our country owes them a debt of gratitude and the least that we could do is provide the most honorable service available to our veterans when they pass away," said Pinter, former bandmaster...

For 35 years, the slow, melancholy notes have poured from George Menefee's bugle, sounding taps. On green cemetery lawns, standing a respectful distance from mourners, Menefee has lulled old soldiers — airmen, actually — to a final rest. Now, the 59-year-old Menefee is facing a different kind of rest — the possible loss of his job as Randolph AFB's honor guard bugler. And like many American workers, the source of his unemployment is new technology. "I never thought a couple of AA batteries would knock me out of a job," he said. The "digital" bugle, a cone-shaped, battery-powered device that...