SAN DIEGO (KGTV) - Trumpeters across the nation are playing TAPS at the same time Sunday to honor John McCain while he's laid to rest at the Naval Academy.
A Facebook group called TAPS across the Nation was created last Sunday:
"on a thought. A thought that it would be so cool if I, along with buglers/trumpet players across our great nation could all play Taps at the exact same time for John McCain. How cool would that be? The idea grew and I started this group. So here is how this is going to work. This coming Sunday, September 2, 2018 at 2pm EDT, 1pm CDT, 12pm MDT, 11am PDT we are all going to go out to our local Veterans cemeteries, memorials, national monuments, VA hospitals, Military bases, civilian cemeteries, front yards, back yards, WHERE EVER YOU CAN, and play Taps to honor John McCain, to give him his last sound off as he is laid to rest at the US Naval Academy's cemetery. I dream that there are so many of us playing that his family, his friends, his constituents and even he can hear us playing for him. This won't be a one time thing. Now that we have this formed, when we need a nation wide rally for TAPS, we will have the group and it can grow and grow. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, for joining in with me on this project."
TAPS across the Nation
Three people will play in San Diego.
Jason Ford found out about the group through Bugles Across America. He's part of the 25 people in the San Diego Chapter who fill in where the military can't, playing at more than 1,000 funerals last year.
"They call it the mission." Ford said it's a very serious honor.
Ford got his start playing the trumpet to spite his parents. He said they wouldn't let him play drums because they were too loud, so he figured the trumpet was second best.
He's used to playing for plays and other fun public events, but feels playing at military funerals is his way of giving back to the country.
He never served, but his father was a pilot in WWII, "he was going to ship out in September of '45 in the first wave that was going to land on main land Japan, and was called off because of the Atomic bomb drops, so he didn't have to go, and if he would've gone I wouldn't have been here."
More than 160 people will play TAPS at the same time, 2 p.m. Eastern, 11 a.m. Pacific, while John McCain is laid to rest.
"I'll probably stand over here overlooking the ocean," Ford said at the Rosecrans National Cemetery, that way he can be on the Southwestern-most corner of the United States.
The honor uniting the nation from corner to corner and coast to coast.
"It's kind of irrelevant what I thought of him politically, it's about his service in the Senate, and before that in Congress and of course for all those years in the military too," Ford said.
