'Taps' for Uncle Bud

America buried another of its Greatest Generation war veterans on St. Patrick’s Day.

In this case it was Charles F. O’Donnell, my Uncle Bud.

Bud was married to my Aunt Chris, my mother’s sister.

Bud’s obituary will tell you that he peacefully passed away on Dec. 3, 2010, just short of his 94th birthday, in his home in Virginia Beach with family by his side, that he was born in the Bronx, N.Y., Jan. 21, 1917.

It will talk about a long, distinguished career in the U.S. Army -- World War II, the reparation years in Japan after the war, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. (In the photo, Bud is in the center with his sons, my cousins, Skip on the left and Tom on the right during a visit to Vung Tau, Vietnam.)

The obituary -- like most obits -- will give you a broad outline of what the man did in his lifetime, but not who he was.

My Dad and Bud were brothers in law and I remember them as being fast friends. It wasn’t a forced friendship of being related by marriage; they seemed genuinely close.

They were both military -- Dad was Air Force, Bud was Army. They loved research and history -- Dad as a biographer, Bud as a journalist and former editor of Stars & Stripes.

Both were engaging, both could tell stories, both seemed larger than life.

My Dad died 25 years ago.

Bud loved to tell jokes, mostly corny jokes, many involving puns.

“What do you call a witch on the beach?”

“A sand-witch.”

And he’d reward you with a bite-size Tootsie Roll for your giggle or groan.

He was interred with military honors last Thursday at Arlington National Cemetery. Twenty-one gun salute. “Taps” from a bugler. A family full of sorrow, but full of pride.

I don’t think we appreciated our parents -- the members of the Greatest Generation -- very much when we were kids.

We didn’t like their music. We didn’t like their politics. We didn’t like their societal constraints.

Yet, these are the people who after World War II created the families and the middle class lifestyle that so many of us Baby Boomers enjoyed and, frankly, took for granted.

They made every effort to send us to college to givce us the educational and and professional opportunities that perhaps they didn’t have.

And they expected nothing in return except for us to have maybe a better, more fulfilling, more enriching life than they did.

We, their Baby Booomer children -- now that we’re older, with children and grandchildren of our own -- are realizing the full value of what Bud, my Dad and countless others did for us, both by deed and by example.

A thank you doesn’t seem enough. But it’s a start: Thanks, for everything.

The day the music was born

I have no real memory of music before Feb. 9, 1964.

That’s the night The Beatles played live on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

There was music in my young life before then. I was a few months shy of 11.

But it was my parents’ music -- the Broadway musicals and Perry Como and Nat King Cole.

For all intents and purposes, their music was background music to my life.

The Beatles finally gave me my music that became the forefront of my Baby Boomer generation.

It consumed me. What length there was to my crew cut hair I mashed down onto my forehead to look like John, Paul, George and Ringo.

Everything flowed from that first night. My records. My guitars. My music.

The Beatles led me to Bob Dylan and Paul Simon, then to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and Neil Young, and on … and on … and on.

My music was born on Feb. 9, 1964 and morphed into a variety of rock, pop, folk, funk and metal over the years.

To many in my cohort, the music died with the birth of the new sounds.

I’m reminded of many comments I read from my contemporaries on Facebook as they watched the Grammy Awards last month.

Basically the theme was: Who are these people? And what are they singing?

To them, music is dead if it’s being sung by Justin Bieber. To them, the music is dead if Lady Gaga is simply ripping-off what Madonna was doing 20 years ago.

I don’t quite see it that way. I think my music is still alive and well.

It continues to morph in the way it has always changed. Baby Boomers shouldn’t have so much conceit about their music that they dismiss out of hand anything else.

The Music lives in Green Day and the Avett Brothers and Mumford and Sons and countless others.

And with Paul Simon still making music -- still playing after all these years and with the release of his new album “Afterlife” -- it hasn’t died by any means.

There's no RIP yet.