Warning: This story has mentions of war violence and suicide.
This Memorial Day, Vietnam veteran Harold Keller will grab his euphonium — a brass instrument that resembles a tuba, but smaller — step out into his yard, and at 3:00 p.m., start playing the song “Taps.”
“I am glad that I'm here to do it,” the 89-year-old said. “I'm getting up to an age now where I'm losing all my friends.”
Keller and several others from Colorado will join in the tune as part of Taps Across America. It’s a nonprofit that encourages people to grab their instruments and play the song on Memorial Day to honor those who died in combat.
An earlier, different version of the song was originally meant as a call to turn off all lights during the Civil War. But a general at the time thought the song was too formal for the end of a day, so he had a bugle boy help him rewrite the song into the 24 notes it is known as today. Now it is frequently used at veteran funerals and other military events.
Keller learned how to play the trumpet and the tuba in grade school. When he went into basic training in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, they asked for volunteers to play in the Regimental Bugle and Drum Corp.
“I thought that was a good way to get out of some crappy duty,” Keller joked.
Keller served on the Air Force Reserves aeromedical evacuation squadron and was on standby during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was discharged in 1963 and stopped playing music shortly before that.
It wasn’t until a few years ago that he decided he wanted to play an instrument again, so he bought an euphonium. Then he saw Steve Hartman promoting Taps Across America on CBS as a way to still honor veterans while being socially distanced during COVID-19.
“I thought, ‘I’m gonna do that. I want to honor our veterans and I want to be able to play my horn,’ ” he said.
The first time he played it at his house, he recalled that his neighbors were outside having a Memorial Day party. They all clapped and cheered and told him he should share his music. Since then, he’s played taps at the Chapel Hill Cemetery near his house in Centennial.
“People visiting their loved ones at the cemetery heard that and some walked by and thanked me graciously for doing that,” he said. “That gave me a great feeling to keep doing this … I get tears when people do that.”
Lochbuie resident Fred Boucher has also been playing "Taps" for the past couple of years outside her home. She said she doesn’t play the trumpet well, but she can get through the song.
“It’s really not pleasant to listen to, but that's OK, because it's (about) the intention,” she said. “It's honoring my husband when a whole generation of people didn't.”
When Boucher plays, she thinks about her husband, Jeffrey McCrea. He enlisted in 1969 when he was around 20 years old and served on the ground in Vietnam for three years before returning home. But Boucher said even though he had some therapy through a combat vets group, his head was never the same.
“Every single night, he would wake up in the middle of a nightmare, still in Vietnam, getting overrun by the Viet Cong (VC),” she said. “He was in a foxhole with a friend and he went to pull him out and only the top half came out. How could you not have nightmares after something like that?”
In 1992, McCrea committed suicide at home. Boucher still is unsupportive of the war itself, but she believes her husband and the other soldiers who went to fight were doing what they were told and doing the right thing.
Currently 16 people are signed up across Colorado to play for Taps Across America, along with hundreds more across the country. Boucher hopes that those who hear the song will understand the deeper meaning behind Memorial Day.
“It's not just barbecues,” she said. “It’s the people who made the ultimate sacrifice. They put their lives on the line, so that we can remain a free country … so every chance anyone gets to honor a Vietnam vet, please do so.”
