By Ray Bogan, Fox News:
Dona Ana, N.M. – As Memorial Day rolls around, a group of veterans are making it their mission to refurbish an historic cemetery with graves from the Civil War and Mexican American War.
Before the group began its work, the cemetery was overgrown with mesquite bush and sagebrush. But in 2013, Peter Stone was scouting locations for a feature film and walked up next to the cemetery and saw a small metal angel, crosses, and gravestones in the bushes. That sparked the idea for him to refurbish the cemetery.
“It was a cemetery that time forgot. And when you look at the markers, and the era of the dates that they birth and the dates that they died. We’re standing on history,” said Stone, a motion picture location scout and army veteran.
This year, Stone and a team of volunteers, who are largely veterans, got to work. They removed the bushes and brush and refurbished some of the tombstones.
Research led them to find some of the buried were members of Teddy Roosevelt’s Dragoons, a mounted Calvary division. Some of those graves are completely dilapidated and unidentifiable.
“It hurt, to see all these veterans disrespected. I didn’t like it at all,” said Robert Richie, commander of American Legion Post 10 and an army veteran.
The effort took a massive leap forward when almost 200 volunteers gathered in April as part of a joint effort between the local Fox and CBS TV stations. The volunteers got more done in a day then the team had finished all year.
“People do care. We reached out and they responded. We’re not done yet but some honor and respect has been paid to our heroes from yesteryear,” Stone said.
Now all the veterans’ graves have American flags and spotlights so they’re visible at night.
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The Most Awe-Inspiring Version of Taps
If you don’t respect this, you don’t belong here.
If you have ever heard the sound of TAPS at a military funeral, or at any funeral of a veteran you will be very moved by this version. It made me cry when I watched it, and it will make you also.
“Taps” is a bugle call played at dusk, during flag ceremonies, and at military funerals by the United States armed forces. The official military version is played by a single bugle or trumpet, although other versions of the tune may be played in other contexts (e.g., the U.S. Marine Corps Ceremonial Music site has recordings of two bugle and one band version. It is also performed often at Boy Scout, Girl Scout, and Girl Guide meetings and camps. The tune is also sometimes known as “Butterfield’s Lullaby”, or by the first line of the lyric, “Day Is Done”. The duration may vary to some extent; the typical recording 59 seconds long.
I have listened to TAPS at the funeral of several of my friends, both military and law enforcement and every time I hear it now I pause to remember the sacrifices they have made. May God watch over them and their families and all of us that respect the United States of America and its Military Families.
