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Robert A. Mills

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BUGLE
9/15/2012 5:49:15 AM

Barbara, my oldest daughter was married in 1972. She and her husband, Donald Pifer (they now live in Louisville), welcomed my first grandson, Jason, in 1973 (I was only 42!). Jason grew up to become a lacrosse legend at Penfield NY High, and he was offered a place on the team at Annapolis.

Unfulfilled in the Navy, he later graduated from VMI as a second lieutenant in the US Air Force. He became a PJ and was eventually deployed, as a major, to Iraq and then to Afghanastan.

Now a Lt. Colonel, Jason is at McDill AF Base in Florida, and last July he attended (along with his mother, dad, wife, kids, Aunt Dee Dee, and other aunts, uncles, cousins and friends far too numerous to mention in the limited space here) the “Pifer Family Annual Reunion,” about forty altogether, at Santa Rosa Beach FL.

While there, he gave back a World War I bugle to its rightful owner, Davey Pifer, after it had been re-commissioned and seen action in the Middle East during the current altercation — at the age of 95 (in bugle years).

The patriarch Raymond Pifer had originally brought the bugle from France at the end of “the war to end all wars”; and upon his death, he passed it on to his son David. That Pifer subsequently bequeathed it to his son, Davey.

Davey, in a moment of fierce patriotism, gave it temporarily to Jason, as he was about to depart for the Middle East.

‘Take this with you,” Uncle Davey told Jason. “It is a good luck charm that has protected Pifer men in many wars.” (Many wars? It was overseas just once, in WWI. Go figure.)

Dutifully, Jason took the bugle along on a Blackhawk helicopter mission and had it re-certified and photographed with Jason’s armed and camouflaged PJ cohorts. True to destiny, both the bugle and my grandson survived unscathed and in due time returned to the US.

At the “Pifer Family Annual Reunion”, it was Jason’s obligation to return the bugle to Uncle Davey, its rightful owner. The ceremony was to take place the final evening of the weeklong affair, but as it turned out, Jason forgot where he had hidden the sacred talisman!

Fortunately, Davey (by now a trained French horn aficionado) had recently taken up the accordion. While Jason hunted frantically in the bushes, Davey regaled the fidgety Pifers with an impromptu recital of favorite squeezebox airs, including some he said were supposedly Dick Contino arrangements.

Jason eventually found the bugle in the last place he looked and returned it once more into his Uncle Davey’s loving care. It was received with many tears of joy that evening because Jason had returned safely home from the madness of Iraq and Afghanastan; both he and the miraculous bugle were still intact.

Reveille the next morning was sounded at daybreak with a new cacophony of happiness it had rarely contained, even though departure and distance were about to be undertaken by the Pifer clan once more.

Bon voyage! (Everyone arrived safely home. The bugle had done its job.)

Copyright©2012 by Robert A. Mills, all rights reserved

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