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PrintKIDDER — An 83-year-old Navy veteran from northwest Missouri said he expects to patent a device that would provide a 21-gun salute to deceased military members.
Bill Crabb said he got the idea for his invention last Memorial Day, when American Legion leaders in Kidder, about 60 miles north of Kansas City, couldn’t find enough volunteers to fire a salute to the veterans buried in the local cemetery.
“I said, ‘There’s got to be a way to have a firing squad here,’ ” Crabb told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for a story published Monday. “They deserve it and they’re going to get it.”
While the number of veterans who are dying continues to rise, fewer volunteers are available to fire the ceremonial volleys or play taps for military honors.
The military turned to recorded music to solve the taps problem.
Crabb thinks the contraption he built out of metal scrap and carries in the back of his pickup could solve the other. Federal law requires that military funeral honors be provided for any eligible veteran if requested by family.
With so few buglers available, the military began to rely a few years ago on a recorded version of taps. A digital device inserted into a bugle plays a version of taps recorded at Arlington National Cemetery.
The Veterans of Foreign Wars, American Legion or American Veterans traditionally have stepped forward to provide that service.
“We’re running into problems,” said Mike Schlee of the American Legion. “The younger guys are working, so it’s hard for them to get off during the day. The World War II guys are getting a little bit too old. And, I think it’s probably depressing as hell burying all their comrades.”
Schlee said Missouri was among a handful of states with an outstanding program for veterans’ funerals.
The Missouri National Guard has more than a dozen teams around the state that will provide military honors for any qualifying veteran, said Lt. Brent Adams, the program’s operations coordinator.
Adams said if he had known about Crabb’s problem last Memorial Day, he might have been able to help.
Adams said that he wouldn’t mind finding out more about Crabb’s prototype and that it could be incorporated into the Guard’s funeral honors program.
Crabb, a retired blacksmith and welder, doesn’t want to disclose too much about his device. He is afraid someone might steal his idea before he can get it patented.
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