Ritual Team

The Post Funeral Ritual Team is available to conduct military funeral services for deceased military veterans when so requested. The deceased need not be a member of 
VFW Post 1301.

 

Team Coordinator 

 Chuck Knapp

Team Coordinator 

Larry Largent 


Max Bittikofer

Don Burgrabe

Pat Campbell

Lowell Davis

Bill Deaton

Ralph DeVasier

Dale Ferguson

Dan Fruge

Ronald Ganzer

Jim Grieme

Dale Heltsley

Roger Hines

Calvin James

Jessie James

Chuck Knapp

Larry Largent

Fred Read

Bill Reynolds

Ernie Rinella

Ron Russell

Brian Samuel

Bill Stewart

Jerry Swisher

Glen Taylor

George Trammell

Dustin Whitehead

Dale Wilson

National Guard Members

SGT Brandon Page

PVT Garrett

SGT David Kemner

SPC Jeremie Moon

PVT Garrett Lukens

PFC Sam Mocaby

SPC Jacob Martin

SPC Christopher Hines

PFC William DeBose

CPL Clay Brinkely

SPC Eric Leonberger

PFC Cory Brinkely

PVT Deandre Hooks



2007 Veteran's Reunion




 

 


Memorial Day-Rosehill Cemetery 2005



The Veterans Ritual Team has a long history of service to all veterans in Southern Illinois.  Following World War II, local veterans declared that there was a need for a burial team.

The ritual team is made up of volunteers from VFW Post 1301 and American Legion Post 147 who conduct military ceremonies at veterans' funerals.  The team currently has 30 volunteers and continues to recruit new members, especially younger members who have served in recent conflicts. 

Shorty Clayton, a Korean War veteran directed the team for 16 years.  One member drives from Paducah to volunteer his time and another member, who is 93, still volunteers when his health permits.

All branches of the service are represented in the ritual team.  It is made up of a bugler who plays Taps, a commander, a chaplain, and officer of the day and a firing squad.  The seven-member squad fires three vollies from vintage M-1 rifles used during World War II and the Korean War.  John Archer is technical adviser for the care and maintenance of these historic rifles.

Families of veterans who are life members of the VFW and/or American Legion are given a Bible; all families receive the flag that drapes the coffin, after it is folded and presented by the National Guard.  Flags are issued from the Post Office for these ceremonies.

The ritual team performs approximately 100 funerals a year.  Families who request a military ceremony must do so through their funeral director.

The ritual team also performs in Memorial Day services, parades, flag raisings and other ceremonies upon request.


For all those who have given

The Last Full Measure of Devotion 



History of Taps

Taps came out of the Civil War, though the history of its origin is misty. Union Gen. Daniel Butterfield, camped with his brigade at Harrison's Landing, Va., in the summer of 1862, asked his bugler to try a new tune. The bugler, Oliver Wilcox Norton, did not know so at the time but the simple call Butterfield scratched on an envelope and asked him to sound came from an early version of Tattoo, a bugle call used to alert troops to prepare for bedtime roll call. This particular Tattoo had gone out of use by the time of the Civil War.

Butterfield knew the tune, however, from his days before the war as a colonel in the New York militia,. It's the Tattoo by Winfield Scott, composed in1835, also known as the Scott Tattoo. The last five-and-a-half measures are distinctly taps." 

Norton worked out the call with Butterfield and then sounded it in camp. "The music was beautiful on that still summer night, and was heard far beyond the limits of our brigade," Norton later wrote. "The next day I was visited by several buglers from neighboring brigades, asking for copies of the music, which I gladly furnished. I think no general order was issued from army headquarters authorizing the substitution of this for the regulation call, but as each brigade commander exercised his own discretion in such minor matters, the call was gradually taken up through the Army of the Potomac."  

Butterfield gets the credit for taps. A few years after the Civil War, he resigned from the Army and spent his retirement at a country home in Cold Spring, N.Y., overlooking the Hudson River, within earshot of West Point. He could hear a bugler at the military academy sound taps each evening. 

Though its use at military funerals became mandatory with the publication of the U.S. Army Infantry Drill Regulations for 1891, Taps might have been heard graveside for the first time shortly after the
Butterfield-Norton collaboration. At a funeral during the Peninsula Campaign in Virginia, a captain in the Union artillery ordered it played for the burial of a cannoneer. 

For each bugler, then as today, the most sacred duty one performs is the
sounding of Taps  The twenty-four notes, created on a hot and humid
July afternoon in 1862,  comprises our nation’s most eloquent melody.
Playing for a nationwide audience, or playing at a ceremony for a few
people, it is performed with the utmost care and perfection.

Some famous buglers…

Gustav Schurmann, a twelve year-old who served two Civil War generals
and befriended Tad Lincoln, the son of the president.

John Cook, a fifteen year-old who put his bugle down to man an artillery
piece during the Battle of Antietam, then sounding the charge at
Gettysburg.

Louis Benz, who left his homeland of Prussia to serve as chief bugler at
his beloved West Point for forty years.

Oliver Norton, a twenty-two year-old who on that hot summer night in
1862 started a tradition that still remains to this day.

John Martin, who changed his name from Giovanni Martini so he could be
more American, who became George Custer’s bugler and was the last
American soldier to see Custer alive.

Frank Witchey, whose bugle rendition of “Boots and Saddles” had
cavalrymen running and whose “Taps” was heard on November 11, 1921 as
the World War One Unknown was buried at Arlington.

Calvin Titus, who during the siege at Peking during the Boxer Rebellion,
responded to a request for volunteers to scale the wall, with the words
“I’ll try Sir!”  entering that phrase into the Army lexicon.

George Myers,  who played for “Black Jack” Pershing, Hap Arnold,
Jonathan Wainwright and the interment of the World War Two /Korean
Unknowns and whose love of the bugle, placed the honor of sounding
“Taps”  above all his musical duties.

And then the quiet, Christian man from Grand Rapids, who on a chilly day
in November, 1963 sounded the nations farewell to President Kennedy
before a worldwide audience, the largest ever to hear those twenty-four
notes.

L


Fading light, dims the site, and a star gems the sky gleaming bright. From afar, drawing near, falls the night.

Day is done, gone the sun, from the lakes, from the hills, from the sky.
All is well, safely rest, God is near.

Thanks and praise, for our days, neath the sun, neath the stars, neath the sky.
As we go, this we know, God is near.



Last Updated Saturday, February 21, 2010