Excerpt
PATRIOTISM FILLED THE AIR of New Concord, the small eastern Ohio town where I
grew up. Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and Armistice Day were flag-waving
holidays of parades and salutes to the United States and to the soldiers, living
and dead, who had fought for freedom and democracy.
My father was one of those soldiers. He served in France during World War I,
delivering artillery shells to the front on trucks and horse-drawn caissons, and
he came home partially deaf from a cannon blast but otherwise unharmed. He also
was a bugler. He blew the bugle for reveille and taps, for mail call and mess
call, and when the flag was raised.
At home, on those patriotic days that I remember, Dad was again called upon to
play the bugle. He marched in the parade formations when the local veterans from
the Thirty-seventh Ohio Division marched down Main Street on Armistice Day, and
played the colors when they raised the flag at the American Legion hall at the
end of the parade. But the bugling I remember best was the taps he played on
Memorial Day. It was still called Decoration Day then, and families dressed in
their Sunday best would regather at the town cemetery after the parade, carrying
bundles of gladioli ... read full excerpt from: John Glenn: A Memoir ebook
