Haverling students gear up for May 19 Echo Taps
BY BOB RECOTTA THE LEADER

ERIC WENSEL THE LEADER Jeremy Whiting of Bath plays Taps during a Veterans Day service at the Bath VA as Matthew Cote of Buffalo stands at attention.

BATH - The plaintive notes of "Taps" echoed off the hills of Bath National Cemetery during Veterans Day.

And the buglers behind the mournful music included six young musicians from Haverling high school, participaing in a ceremony that had two purposes. First: To honor the men and women who served in the United States Armed Forces.

Second: To rehearse for a much larger celebration next year.

The participants - Matthew Cote, Becky Schied, Jame s White, Michelle Neu, Ken Gilbert and Bryan Smith - are scheduled to perform a second EchoTaps on May 19, 2007.

"It will be a world-wide event," said Col. Gerald McDonald, the vice-chairman of logistics for EchoTaps. "It will take between 10,000 and 20,000 to do it globally."

EchoTaps was held locally for the first time last year. McDonald and Leslie Hampton organized the event. The two served on funeral detail together and used to arrange for a bugler to play Taps at military funerals.

"At one funeral we had two buglers show up," McDonald said. "We started to ask ourselves, what would happen if we had two, three, four or five buglers show up for the same funeral. We said we would line them up down the road and see how it goes."

From those humble beginnings, the idea of EchoTaps grew. McDonald and Hampton recruited 674 buglers to play Taps on May 21, 2005. They lined up at strategic locations from the Bath National Cemetery to Woodlaw n Na t i o n a l Cemetery in Elmira, a distance of 41 miles.

The effort set a world record for the number of buglers playing Taps at one time.

"Had we known how much work it would be beforehand ...," Hampton said. "I put two years of my life into putting this together."

The efforts of McDonald, Hampton and the other organizers and participants did not go unnoticed. Word of the success of EchoTaps reached Washington, D.C. and officials said they wanted to take EchoTaps and take it worldwide to all national cemeteries.

McDonald said, in addition to paying much-deserved tribute to servicemen and women who have fallen while serving our country, EchoTaps also has a practical purpose.

"This is a logistics exercise," McDonald said. "It involved 24 buses, 866 players and eight guards per bus. It was planned like it would be for Chinook helicopters."

The event was so successful, a documentary is being made of the effort. It will premiere Jan. 14 at the Corning Museum of Glass. DVDs of the documentary will be available.