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Live or Digital? The Bugler's Lips Are Sealed
T.
LOUIS, Sept. 12 — It was bound to happen in our technology-mad world. A
device has been invented that not only replaces humans, but also lays them
to rest.
It looks like a bugle. It sounds like a bugle — hauntingly enough to move a funeral mourner to compliment Glenn Hasheider on his rendition of taps last week at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery near St. Louis.
But what Mr. Hasheider did not have the heart to tell the mourner was this:
It's not a bugle, exactly.
It is a bugle discreetly fitted with a battery-operated conical insert that plays the 24 notes of taps at the flick of a switch. It is all digital, with no human talent or breath required. All you do is hold it up, turn it on and try to look like a bugler.
Which Mr. Hasheider, a 61-year-old retired Air Force technical sergeant who says he can not play a simple scale on a real horn, managed to pull off with enough panache to win a mourner's praise.
"He said: `That was the best bugle I've ever heard,' " said Mr. Hasheider, who serves in the cemetery's military color guard. "It really made his day."
After a six-month trial involving more than 1,000 funerals in Missouri, the Pentagon announced this month that the device, known as a ceremonial bugler, could be used across the world at military funerals for which a human bugler is not available.
Veterans groups are pleased. They say mourners would rather hear taps from an electronically enhanced bugle — with real person attached — than from a boombox. Because of a shortage of horn players in the armed services, tape and CD players are the buglers of convenience at most military funerals.
"It's not perfect, but it's certainly more aesthetically pleasing and more dignified than a boombox," Steve Thomas, a spokesman for the American Legion, said.
But whether the digital bugler can be as eloquent, mournful or soulful as a human is the subject of debate. Purists respond with outrage to Pentagon assertions that the device is "virtually indistinguishable from a live bugler."
"It's too perfect," said Norman Ladage, a 71-year-old retiree who plays taps on a real trumpet at the Jefferson Barracks cemetery.
Military officials say the device is likely to be used at most military funerals because there are more veterans dying each year and more requests for military funerals but fewer human buglers.
With the World War II generation hitting the 80's, the Veterans Administration projects that more than 650,000 veterans will die in the coming year. That number is expected to rise annually until 2008.
Under a law enacted by Congress in 1999, most of those veterans — whether they served 2 years or 20, on the front lines or on the chow lines — are entitled to military funerals, which entail having two-person color guards fold and present the American flag, as well as play taps.
But there are only 500 official buglers in the entire American military, most of whom are attached to busy post bands. And while veterans groups and private contractors have tried to pick up the slack, there are not enough players to go around. Bugling, it seems, is a dying art.
"We've got 1,800 veterans dying each day, and only 500 buglers," said Lt. Col. Cynthia Colin, a Defense Department spokeswoman. "We needed to do something to fill the void."
The device was developed under Pentagon guidance by a Manhattan firm, S & D Consulting International, which is now trying to mass produce the units for $525 each. The Pentagon expects it to be in wide use by December.
During a funeral for a World War II veteran on a rain-soaked day here last week, Mr. Hasheider demonstrated how the ceremonial bugler works. Before the service, he slipped the black device snugly inside the bell of a real bugle, where it was impossible to see except from directly in front, where its red power light was visible.
Standing at attention in his blue dress uniform and white gloves, Mr. Hasheider kept the bugle tucked under his left armpit 50 paces from a small outdoor chapel filled with two dozen mourners. As the color guard fired three volleys, he surreptitiously flipped on the power switch. Then he placed the horn to his lips and, after a few seconds delay, taps began to play.
Here's the house this week:
I started teaching middle school religion classes this past week.
My God
daughter Elyse's telephone advice to me was to have frequent pizza parties !
Did you hear Ahnold on Oprah? He brings coffee to his wife in bed every morning like I do.
But he also tells her he loves her and she is wonderful.
Mary now enjoys her coffee so much more since I have copied this to my routine.
St. Pete
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