Broadway part of 'Taps Across America'
The solemn sounds of a bugler playing Taps echoed through the Town of Broadway Monday afternoon.
Tyler Green, a student at Southern Lee High School, played the symbolic melody at the North Carolina Veterans Memorial precisely at 3 p.m. as part of a national program titled 'Taps Across America.'
The Private John Grady chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution hosted the program and provided a brief program beforehand.
'Taps Across America is a nationwide effort at 3 p.m. in each time zone on Memorial Day, musicians are encouraged to step mouton their porch, to go to the cemetery or a memorial and play Taps,' Carolyn Comfort of the Private John Grady D.A.R. chapter said.
During the ceremony, Stacy Nooning, also from the Private John Grady Chapter offered a Memorial Day prayer.
Comfort then shared a poem, 'Born on the Fourth of July,' about her brother Jack, who was killed in Vietnam on Jan. 2, 1968.
'Even though the poem is about Jack, I think it applies to many families across this country in all of our conflicts,' she said.
Comfort said her aunt wrote the poem about six years after Jack was killed in the Vietnam War. She said her family had shared the poem at other Memorial Day programs.
'I think it speaks to all of your fallen warriors,' she said.
Following the poem, Green raised his trumpet to his lips and played the mournful tune as veterans saluted.
'Taps' is a bugle call sounded to signal 'lights out' at the end of a military day and during patriotic memorial ceremonies and military funerals conducted by the United States Armed Forces.
Taps Across America is a nationwide tribute dedicated to honoring the service and sacrifice of our fallen military heroes. Founded in 2020 by retired Air Force bugler Jari Villanueva, Co-Founder of Taps for Veterans, this powerful tradition began as a way to bring Americans together during the pandemic. Instead of parades and public ceremonies, thousands of musicians—professional and amateur alike—took to their front porches and local landmarks to sound Taps in unison.
More than 10,000 musicians participated in the inaugural tribute, and the movement continues to grow. Members of the John Grady Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution hope to continue that tradition in Lee County as well.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Boston Globe
9 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Still marching after all these years
Many of us have had a lot of practice: Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. We protested every bad government action. Advertisement I learned nonviolent civil disobedience from my parents, growing up in Brooklyn. They were activists even before Vietnam. During the civil rights movement, in 1964, driving through St. Augustine, Fla., they attended a demonstration. When protesters refused to leave a sit-in attempting to integrate the Ponce de Leon Motor Lodge restaurant, some were arrested and jailed. My parents were not arrested, but they were present, in solidarity, as lifelong believers in human rights, in including Black Americans in the American Dream. What we now call DEI was already a good goal. Advertisement And me? Young as I was, my good-girl head was down, finishing my master's thesis on Proust, in graduate school far away. I was merely an educated girl, not political yet, not focused on the common good as they were. Both of them had been radicals in the 1930s, when Jewish leftists and others hoped that a popular front could remake US labor relations, control capitalist greed, and bring America closer to equality for women and people of color. Paul Robeson was one of their idols, along with Eleanor Roosevelt. Later, they opposed the Vietnam War, just as my husband and I did. In 1968, running against feckless Hubert Humphrey, treacherous Richard Nixon promised to end the war, and then prolonged it until more than 50,000 men my age died, as well as countless Vietnamese and Cambodians. In 1972 my father worked to elect Elizabeth Holtzman, also of Brooklyn, to Congress. So she was in the House of Representatives in time to vote to impeach the corrupt Nixon in the summer of 1974. My father, with ALS sapping his body, had followed the investigation and trial avidly from the green couch in the living room. But he missed out on the ending. By August he was in a coma; he died two days short of Nixon's ignominious exit. The night Nixon left, making his awkward, hypocritical peace signs, my mother and I were dining in the dim kitchen with my cousin Sherry, grieving and rejoicing. In that painful, complex mood, we poured some wine and drank to him: 'Marty should have been here to see this day.' 'Daddy should have been here.' Advertisement I know my parents would be out with me on the streets now. They were there, in a sense — at a #HandsOff rally on April 5 in Newton, at an April 19 event to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the beginning of the American Revolution in Waltham, and then at the 'No Kings' rally. The signs were clever and scathing at all these events; drivers going by were honking in approval, shouting, applauding. My laconic father's sign would have said, very big, in block letters, 'NO!' Once when my mother was in her 90s and had lost many memories, I asked her, 'What is wisdom?' She answered unhesitatingly: 'The greatest part of wisdom is kindness.' Her sign, which I saw an older woman hold at the Waltham rally, would have read 'Make America kind again.' 'Nothing is stranger than the position of the dead among the living,' Virginia Woolf wrote in her first, unpublished novel, 'Melymbrosia.' I find it marvelous that my parents can still stand by my side. The rest of our family is in the streets, too: our son and his children in New York City. That solidarity is so welcome to us — just as it must have been to my parents when we opposed the Vietnam War early on, when they felt alone and scorned, when so few Americans had yet come to their senses. Advertisement Intergenerational solidarity is precious. That preciousness includes not only the next generations, but the oldest, too. To all of us lucky enough to have older people in our lives, they comfort us by their presence. Repositories of family lore and legend, they dole out secrets and, for better or worse, guide us by their experiences. And sometimes by the energy of their activism, right now! I see my parents' faces vividly. I summon them and their will to do good, which survives them, in this national emergency. Their memory is a blessing in the here and now and the strife to come.
The Hill
11 hours ago
- The Hill
How Senate Republicans want to change the tax breaks in Trump's big bill
WASHINGTON (AP) — House and Senate Republicans are taking slightly different approaches when it comes to the tax cuts that lawmakers are looking to include in their massive tax and spending cuts bill. Republicans in the two chambers don't agree on the size of a deduction for state and local taxes. And they are at odds on such things as allowing people to use their health savings accounts to help pay for their gym membership, or whether electric vehicle and hybrid owners should have to pay an annual fee. The House passed its version shortly before Memorial Day. Now the Senate is looking to pass its version. While the two bills are similar on the major tax provisions, how they work out their differences in the coming weeks will determine how quickly they can get a final product over the finish line. President Donald Trump is pushing to have the legislation on his desk by July 4th. Here's a look at some of the key differences between the two bills: The child tax credit currently stands at $2,000 per child. The House bill temporarily boosts the child tax credit to $2,500 for the 2025 through 2028 tax years, roughly the length of President Donald Trump's second term. It also indexes the credit amount for inflation beginning in 2027. The Senate bill provides a smaller, initial bump-up to $2,200, but the bump is permanent, with the credit amount indexed for inflation beginning next year. Trump promised on the campaign trail that he would seek to end income taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security benefits. Also, he would give car buyers a new tax break by allowing them to deduct the interest paid on auto loans. The House and Senate bills incorporate those promises with temporary deductions lasting from the 2025 through 2028 tax years, but with some differences. The House bill creates a deduction on tips for those working in jobs that have customarily received tips. The House also provides for a deduction for overtime that's equal to the amount of OT a worker has earned. The Senate bill comes with more restrictions. The deduction for tips is limited to $25,000 per taxpayer and the deduction for overtime is limited to $12,500 per taxpayer. The House and Senate bills both provide a deduction of up to $10,000 for interest paid on loans for vehicles made in the United States. And on Social Security, the bills don't directly touch the program. Instead, they grant a larger tax deduction for Americans age 65 and older. The House sets the deduction at $4,000. The Senate sets it at $6,000. Both chambers include income limits over which the new deductions begin to phase out. The caps on state and local tax deductions, known in Washington as the SALT cap, now stand at $10,000. The House bill, in a bid to win over Republicans from New York, California and New Jersey, lifts the cap to $40,000 per household with incomes of less than $500,000. The credit phases down for households earning more than $500,000. The Senate bill keeps the cap at $10,000. That's a non-starter in the House, but Republicans in the two chambers will look to negotiate a final number over the coming weeks that both sides can accept. The House bill prohibits states from establishing new provider taxes or increasing existing taxes. These are taxes that Medicaid providers, such as hospitals, pay to help states finance their share of Medicaid costs. In turn, the taxes allow states to receive increased federal matching funds while generally holding providers harmless through higher reimbursements that offset the taxes paid. Such taxes now are effectively capped at 6%. The Senate looks to gradually lower that threshold for states that have expanded their Medicaid populations under the Affordable Care Act, or 'Obamacare,' until it reaches 3.5% in 2031, with exceptions for nursing homes and intermediate care facilities. Industry groups have warned that limiting the ability of states to tax providers may lead to some states making significant cuts to their Medicaid programs as they make up for the lost revenue in other ways. The Medicaid provision could be a flashpoint in the coming House and Senate negotiations. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., was highly critical of the proposed Senate changes. 'This needs a lot of work. It's really concerning and I'm really surprised by it,' he said. 'Rural hospitals are going to be in bad shape.' The House bill would allow companies for five years to fully deduct equipment purchases and domestic research and development expenses. The Senate bill includes no sunset, making the tax breaks permanent, which was a key priority of powerful trade groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Republicans in both chambers are looking to scale back the clean energy tax credits enacted through then-President Joe Biden's climate law. It aimed to boost the nation's transition away from planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions toward renewable energy such as wind and solar power. Under the Senate bill, the tax credits for clean energy and home energy efficiency would still be phased out, but less quickly than under the House bill. Still, advocacy groups fear that the final measure will threaten hundreds of thousands of jobs and drive up household energy costs. The House bill would allow millions of Americans to use their health savings accounts to pay for gym memberships, with a cap of $500 for single taxpayers and $1,000 for joint filers. The Senate bill doesn't include such a provision. The House reinstates a charitable deduction for non-itemizers of $150 per taxpayer. The Senate bill increases that deduction for donations to $1,000 per taxpayer. Republicans in the House bill included a new annual fee of $250 for EV owners and $100 for hybrid owners that would be collected by state motor vehicle departments. The Senate bill excludes the proposed fees. ___
11 hours ago
How Senate Republicans want to change the tax breaks in Trump's big bill
WASHINGTON -- House and Senate Republicans are taking slightly different approaches when it comes to the tax cuts that lawmakers are looking to include in their massive tax and spending cuts bill. Republicans in the two chambers don't agree on the size of a deduction for state and local taxes. And they are at odds on such things as allowing people to use their health savings accounts to help pay for their gym membership, or whether electric vehicle and hybrid owners should have to pay an annual fee. The House passed its version shortly before Memorial Day. Now the Senate is looking to pass its version. While the two bills are similar on the major tax provisions, how they work out their differences in the coming weeks will determine how quickly they can get a final product over the finish line. President Donald Trump is pushing to have the legislation on his desk by July 4th. Here's a look at some of the key differences between the two bills: The child tax credit currently stands at $2,000 per child. The House bill temporarily boosts the child tax credit to $2,500 for the 2025 through 2028 tax years, roughly the length of President Donald Trump's second term. It also indexes the credit amount for inflation beginning in 2027. The Senate bill provides a smaller, initial bump-up to $2,200, but the bump is permanent, with the credit amount indexed for inflation beginning next year. Trump promised on the campaign trail that he would seek to end income taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security benefits. Also, he would give car buyers a new tax break by allowing them to deduct the interest paid on auto loans. The House and Senate bills incorporate those promises with temporary deductions lasting from the 2025 through 2028 tax years, but with some differences. The House bill creates a deduction on tips for those working in jobs that have customarily received tips. The House also provides for a deduction for overtime that's equal to the amount of OT a worker has earned. The Senate bill comes with more restrictions. The deduction for tips is limited to $25,000 per taxpayer and the deduction for overtime is limited to $12,500 per taxpayer. The House and Senate bills both provide a deduction of up to $10,000 for interest paid on loans for vehicles made in the United States. And on Social Security, the bills don't directly touch the program. Instead, they grant a larger tax deduction for Americans age 65 and older. The House sets the deduction at $4,000. The Senate sets it at $6,000. Both chambers include income limits over which the new deductions begin to phase out. The caps on state and local tax deductions, known in Washington as the SALT cap, now stand at $10,000. The House bill, in a bid to win over Republicans from New York, California and New Jersey, lifts the cap to $40,000 per household with incomes of less than $500,000. The credit phases down for households earning more than $500,000. The Senate bill keeps the cap at $10,000. That's a non-starter in the House, but Republicans in the two chambers will look to negotiate a final number over the coming weeks that both sides can accept. The House bill prohibits states from establishing new provider taxes or increasing existing taxes. These are taxes that Medicaid providers, such as hospitals, pay to help states finance their share of Medicaid costs. In turn, the taxes allow states to receive increased federal matching funds while generally holding providers harmless through higher reimbursements that offset the taxes paid. Such taxes now are effectively capped at 6%. The Senate looks to gradually lower that threshold for states that have expanded their Medicaid populations under the Affordable Care Act, or 'Obamacare,' until it reaches 3.5% in 2031, with exceptions for nursing homes and intermediate care facilities. Industry groups have warned that limiting the ability of states to tax providers may lead to some states making significant cuts to their Medicaid programs as they make up for the lost revenue in other ways. The Medicaid provision could be a flashpoint in the coming House and Senate negotiations. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., was highly critical of the proposed Senate changes. 'This needs a lot of work. It's really concerning and I'm really surprised by it,' he said. 'Rural hospitals are going to be in bad shape.' The House bill would allow companies for five years to fully deduct equipment purchases and domestic research and development expenses. The Senate bill includes no sunset, making the tax breaks permanent, which was a key priority of powerful trade groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Republicans in both chambers are looking to scale back the clean energy tax credits enacted through then-President Joe Biden's climate law. It aimed to boost the nation's transition away from planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions toward renewable energy such as wind and solar power. Under the Senate bill, the tax credits for clean energy and home energy efficiency would still be phased out, but less quickly than under the House bill. Still, advocacy groups fear that the final measure will threaten hundreds of thousands of jobs and drive up household energy costs. The House bill would allow millions of Americans to use their health savings accounts to pay for gym memberships, with a cap of $500 for single taxpayers and $1,000 for joint filers. The Senate bill doesn't include such a provision. The House reinstates a charitable deduction for non-itemizers of $150 per taxpayer. The Senate bill increases that deduction for donations to $1,000 per taxpayer. Republicans in the House bill included a new annual fee of $250 for EV owners and $100 for hybrid owners that would be collected by state motor vehicle departments. The Senate bill excludes the proposed fees.
