Letter: No good reason to resort to digital bugles

Sunday, June 3, 2007 | 7:13 a.m.

M y wife and I were recently in Las Vegas to visit our son Mark, and as always I purchased a daily copy of the Las Vegas Sun. As a retired music educator and cornet player, I read with interest the informative May 21 article by Ed Koch, "Bugles fade, worries sounded."

In his story, Mr. Koch points out the shortage of buglers to play "Taps" for military funerals. It is interesting this shortage exists with the availability of literally thousands of high school, collegiate, and adult cornet/trumpet players in this country. With a little extra effort on the part of band directors, funeral directors, veteran associations, etc., I am confident sufficient buglers can be found to play "Taps" without resorting to an unreliable and heartless mechanical device.

I started playing "Taps" for military funerals during World War II and continued on a regular basis during the Korean and Vietnam conflicts.

I never asked for compensation for this service to the bereaved families and only declined to play "Taps" once, and that was for my dad's funeral. He was a veteran of World War I. I personally feel every cornet/trumpet player in our public/private school bands should learn to play "Taps" so when a bugler is needed, they will be able to provide this service without monetary compensation and simply because it is the right thing to do. Hopefully, this will bring our younger players closer to the realities of the horror of war.

It is important that we do all we can to honor the memory of our fallen heroes and hopefully real buglers (cornet/trumpet players) will be there to do their part.

Norvil Howell, Clovis, N.M.