'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.