Twenty-Four Notes

In the military, fortitude and magnanimity walk hand in hand. The need for mental and emotional strength to endure potentially perilous situations is essential. However, showing compassion towards civilians, offering medical aid to one’s adversaries, and displaying goodwill to all is not a sign of weakness, but rather a demonstration of strength and moral character. My grandfather demonstrated these qualities through humility and by example. No great orations or persuasive lectures. He lived by, and often quoted, Matthew 7:12. “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets” (ESV). 

Anyone who has attended a funeral held with American military honors knows the haunting beauty of its ceremonial remembrance. The flag is draped upon the closed casket so that the blue field is at the head and over the left shoulder of the deceased. Three to seven members of the appropriate military affiliation form a Firing Party. They stand a respectful distance from mourners and a three-shot volley is sounded. The command is given: “Ready.” The rifle is charged with the blank cartridges. “Aim.” The rifles are raised, pointing over the casket. “Fire.” Each volley represents the core military values: duty, honor, and country. Once all rifles are simultaneously brought back to attention, Taps is sounded by the bugler, 24 notes contained in 59 seconds. 

The American flag is lifted off the casket by the Honor Guard. It is held tautly and twice folded in half, lengthwise, beginning at the stripes opposite the blue field. The Honor Guard member continues a crisp folding of the colors in triangular shapes until the blue field of the flag is reached. The edge is then tucked into the open fold, leaving only the white stars on the blue field visible from both sides. The thirteen folds symbolize the 13 Colonies that formed the United States. [1]

The flag is then presented to the next of kin, on behalf of a grateful nation.

I have attended the military funeral for my father, mother, and father-in-law, all who served in WWII. But the most difficult funeral was that of my beloved grandfather, a WWI veteran, Everett David Parry. 

Gramps, as I called him, was a man of infinite moral character. Born into a Scots/Irish Presbyterian family in 1899, bluster and blarney guided him to fudge his young age so he could join the Navy in World War I. From his shipmates he earned his lifelong nickname, Puggy, due to his genetically flat nose, a trait that he shared with me.

Upon returning from the war, he moved back to his hometown of Valparaiso, Indiana, where he married my grandma, Eileen, and the two of them opened Parry’s Grocery Store. Situated on the old Valparaiso University campus, he fed many a young college student before there were meal services at academic institutions. He also helped his friends and neighbors through the Great Depression by trading goods and services for groceries. 

He was a man who wanted a better world for his children and grandchildren. He valued education and was an avid reader. My mom and uncle were privileged to attend Indiana University in the late 1930s and early 1940s, but their education was interrupted by the onset of WWII. Like their father, they both enlisted; Mom in the Women’s Army Corps and my uncle in the Marines.

Looking for a way to serve as best he could, my grandfather, a member of the American Legion, decided to play the bugle. Young men from every branch of the military began returning home to be buried and there was no one who could honor them by playing Taps. So, my grandfather volunteered with a bugle borrowed from the American Legion (Charles Pratt Post 94) and he taught himself the 24-note somber melody. 

“Taps” began as a military calling for men to “extinguish lights” prior to the Civil War. In 1862, Major General Daniel Adams Butterfield did not like the formal tone of the melody, so with the help of his brigade bugler, Oliver Willcox Norton, they revised the previous melody to what we today know as Taps. 

In an interview with NPR, former Arlington National Cemetery bugler, Jari Villanueva, explained how Taps went from a call for lights out to a funeral rite.

“Shortly after the melody was revised, there was a funeral in one of the artillery companies. The captain in charge decided that he did not want to fire the (then) customary three cannon volleys over the grave, since he was afraid that firing those three customary volleys might tell the enemy that we’re going to start fighting again. He just simply told his bugler to sound Taps. So that became the first time it was associated with a military funeral.” [2]

Gramps continued to play for military ceremonies years after my brother and I were born. However, in the late summer of 1960, my Gramps placed the bugle in a closet where it began to gather dust and allowed the brass to tarnish. Death had become personal.

My Grandma Eileen died of polycystic kidney disease. His heart was broken. Parry’s Grocery Store was sold and he retired, wanting to devote his time to his family, his garden, and his books. But death had not ceased its hold on his heart. Just two years later, his daughter, my mom, was diagnosed with leukemia and died. He became a broken man.

Time doesn’t stop for sorrow. The war in Vietnam accelerated with over 500,000 American troops deployed by 1969. The American Legion once again called on Gramps and asked him to play for military funerals of young local men being killed overseas in southeast Asia. He took his bugle down from the closet, polished it, and practiced, and again honored the families and the souls who served. 

From middle school through my high school years, I spent every weekend staying at my Gramps’s home, often accompanied by friends, our guitars, and our Bibles. The Jesus Revolution had come to Valparaiso and his home was always a welcome place. Without exception, every teenager would reach up and take down the bugle and attempt to get a note. He’d play Taps for us and then we would talk about the evils of war and peace of God. Gramps would make a pot of coffee, light his pipe, and just listen. We all thought he was the wisest man around.

Throughout the next seven years, Gramps eventually gave up driving and gifted me his 1969 Chevy Nova. I would drive him to the grocery store each week and to play at military funerals for old friends as they were passing away. The tone of his bugle was still pure as Taps sounded through the silence. He was there, steadfast, with a heart full of honor. 

On a Sunday morning in August of 1979, Gramps called me and said he needed to go to the hospital. He was two months shy of his 80th birthday, and his cognitive skills and humor had not dulled one bit. He knew he was coming to the end of his earthly life, and he was not afraid. I opened my Bible to 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 and read to him at his bedside: 

“But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.” (ESV)

He looked me in the eyes for the last time and said, “I believe.”

At his gravesite, the American Legion color guard was present, the rifle volley was sounded, but no bugler was in attendance to play Taps. Instead, a Panasonic cassette recorder sat on a metal folding chair. A member of the color guard reached down and pressed PLAY. 

[1] The Meaning of the 13 Flag Folds at a Military Funeral. October 27, 2023. https://militaryperson.com/13-flag-folds-military-funeral-meaning/

[2] Keyes, Allison and Villanueva, Jari. Historian Explains The Origin Of “Taps”. May 30, 2011.  

https://www.npr.org/2011/05/30/136721508/historian-explains-the-origin-of-taps

The featured image, “The Bugle,” is courtesy of Hillevi Peterson and is used with her kind permission for Cultivating.

Hillevi Peterson

Hillevi Anne Peterson is a mother, wife, teacher, singer/songwriter, actress, writer, and a lifelong learner and adventurer. She holds a Masters in Teaching Literature and Communications from Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota and additional degrees in Communications and Media Studies, Visual Communication Technologies, and Music.

Born into a performing arts family, Hillevi donned ballet shoes at five, began piano at eight and got her first guitar at 12. But it was the church choir at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church that gave her voice wings. After losing her mom to Leukemia at age nine, music became a place for childhood grief when she sang. That Christmas, one of the parishioners gave Hillevi a copy of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe — a book that began her lifelong journey desiring the mystery of Christ and celebrating Him through the arts.

Married to Derry Drayton Hirsch, Hillevi is the mother of five creative adult children. In January of 2009, the dream of living in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado came alive. They reside at an elevation of 9400 feet in the Pikes Peak National Forest in a home they call Middle Earth.