Call of the bugle.
Byline: Randi Bjornstad The Register-GuardShe chose the trumpet as her instrument "because it had fewer valves than the clarinet," but Donna-Mae Baldenecker Burr Smith's childhood choice paid off a few years later when she became the first woman bugler in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, a force of 150,000 women established by Congress in 1942, just months after the United States entered the war following Pearl Harbor.
Until a couple of years ago, the now 89-year-old Smith still traveled the state, playing "Taps" at hundreds of funerals of U.S. military veterans as well as for Memorial Day and Veterans Day commemorations.
"I was so proud I was in the service, and especially as a bugler," Smith said. "I've traveled to many places to play at services; it was always something I felt I wanted to do."
Her devotion has been rewarded. Earlier this year, the Buglers Hall of Fame inducted the Sutherlin resident as a member, honoring Smith as the "first female bugler in the United States military," and only the second woman accepted into the group, which along with many military buglers also includes Louis Armstrong.
"For the first time, a woman wakened the members of Fort Des Moines Army post Tuesday morning," reads the article in the St. Paul (Minn.) Dispatch, from sometime in 1942. "At 5:45 a.m., when it was dark as midnight, Auxiliary Donna-Mae Baldenecker, 22, of St. Paul Park, Minn., solo trumpet player with the Women's Army Auxiliary Band, blew loud and clear the `Reveille' theme which warns of the imminent boom of the post cannon and the beginning of the day's work."
In a humorous aside, the story went on, "All the familiar Army phrases which are mutteringly directed at the bugler when it's time to get up will have to be changed now. Because the bugler, alternate mornings, will be a she instead of a he."
Although most buglers play modern trumpets - which unlike ancient bugles and trumpets have valves - they're still called buglers because they play traditional "bugle calls," according to a history of the art written by Buglers Hall of Fame member Jari Villanueva. Besides the lack of valves, the shape of the original bugles and trumpets were different, and both produced fewer notes than the modern trumpet, Villanueva wrote. The oldest surviving metal trumpets came from the tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun.
"Reveille" and "Taps" may be the most familiar of the bugle calls, originally written to begin and end the military day, but from the Revolutionary War on, U.S. soldiers historically lived from call to call, their entire days ordered by distinctive sets of notes - sometimes as few as four daily or as many as 10 or more - that sounded throughout forts and camps.
After "Reveille's" roll call, cavalry soldiers followed the "stable call" to groom and feed their horses. There were meal calls, sick calls and work duty calls, as well as calls to guard duty, military drills, end-of-work duty, parade, flag lowering, securing the post and bed check.
Smith, then still Baldenecker, "has played a trumpet eight years, and has learned most of the Army calls," the St. Paul Dispatch boasted.
Her trumpet playing actually started in elementary school and continued through high school, Smith recalls.
"It was unusual" back then for a girl to pick up the trumpet, but besides the valve issue, she chose it "because one of my sisters already played the clarinet, and the other had a bassoon," she said. "In high school, "there was only one other trumpeter, and that was a guy."
After graduating from St. Paul Park High School in 1938, she studied privately with L.L. Wittbecker, who had played trumpet with John Philip Sousa's band. "I wanted to be a music teacher - I went to the Minneapolis College of Music for a year, and then the University of Minnesota for a year."
She also worked at West Publishing Company, which "did law books," until 1942, when she switched to the Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant in nearby New Brighton.
But when the nation entered World War II, Smith felt compelled to sign up, and she found her place in the WAAC band, where she held the rank of sergeant.
"It was an all-woman band - we were replacing the men's bands which were being sent overseas," she said. "We started with a small band, but eventually we had about 80 women in the barracks; there were eight trumpet players altogether. We practiced in every closet and hallway we could find, and we had band rehearsal for two hours every morning in the day room."
Mostly they played marches - Smith's favorite is the "Under the Double Eagle March," written by Austrian composer Josef Franz Wagner and popularized by Sousa - and the women in the band enjoyed perks such as "no KP, and no calisthenics," she remembers. "They were afraid we might hurt our little fingers."
She could have remained in the Army longer, "but I got married and had a baby, and married women couldn't be in the Army," Smith said. "That is my one regret - I was asked to go to warrant officers school, and I didn't. I had fallen in love - we all make mistakes," she jokes.
Nonetheless, she remained in the military in a way, accompanying her husband, Robert Burr, to posts in Illinois and Oregon before he left the Army and they moved back to Minnesota.
In 1951, "after too many snowstorms," the couple relocated to California, where he died in 1964, and she later remarried, to a widower named Edgar Smith. After living first in Nevada, the couple decided about 15 years ago that they wanted to live in Oregon.
"We started in Southern Oregon and stopped at every little town that sounded pretty," Smith said. "We got as far north as Cottage Grove and decided it had too much traffic, so we came back to Sutherlin and bought this place."
Once settled, she joined the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Roseburg, and before long the VFW post in nearby Winston asked if she also would play the trumpet for them, and her second musical career - as a volunteer bugler this time - was under way.
Eugene bugler Adrian Vaaler understands - and shares - Smith's dedication to playing the bugle calls, especially the emotional "Taps," whenever requested.
"It's always been an important part of my life," says Vaaler, who served in the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in Vietnam in 1969-70 after being drafted into the military. "If someone asks, I play, and I've played `Taps' at least 400 or 500 times. But it's a very emotional experience - every time I play `Taps,' it takes something out of me."
At the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., in 1984, Vaaler felt moved to stand at the top of the wall and begin the call, flanked by other veterans as he played; a photograph of his offering appeared the next year in National Geographic Magazine.
"On the way back from that trip (on the train), I played `Taps' at every stop on the way," Vaaler said, his voice choking.
"There was a woman on the train whose son had died in Vietnam, and she said she'd never heard `Taps' for him. In Shelby, Mont., we got off the train and found a couple of trees. We made a little formation for her, and I played `Taps.'"
Vaaler agrees with Smith that every veteran deserves a personal rendition of "Taps," and both buglers believe it should be done by a real musician instead of the recent trend toward a recorded version, often encased in a "fake" bugle.
"I don't like it - it's not the same," Vaaler said, but Smith's feelings are even stronger.
"Deplorable - absolutely deplorable," the Hall of Fame bugler said. "If there aren't enough (military) people to do it, I know there are students who would be willing to do it, to be of service to their country. `Taps' should always be played by a bugler."
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| Publication: | The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR) |
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| Date: | Aug 2, 2009 |
| Words: | 1329 |
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