Vietnam vet plays “Taps” every day with Boy Scout bugle

Larry Parsons, of Montgomery, stands on his open porch every day at 5 p.m. and plays “Taps.” He has an Amazon Alexa notification to remind him, just in case he forgets what time it is. “A couple of neighborhood children across from his place come out with their hand on their hearts, almost daily,” Parsons said. The children came out the day we visited him, and another neighbor from across the corner shouted, “Thanks for your service Larry!”

Parsons served in the United State Army 1st Infantry Division from 1968-1971, serving in the Vietnam War. After returning from the war, he decided to join the Montgomery Honor Guard.

His playing of “Taps” on a daily basis has a start much earlier than his military experience though as a boy scout. Parsons needed to obtain his bugling merit badge. “I had to memorize some 13 of them and enjoyed it,” said Parsons. “I still have the booklet.”

When Parsons had completed obtaining his merit badge in 1957 or 1958, he said, “My parents bought me the official Boy Scouts bugle.” The bugle is made of brass and inscribed showing that it is the official bugle of the Boy Scouts. This is what he uses regularly to play on. It’s a little beaten and the patina is showing, but that doesn’t bother him much.

Why play “Taps” every single day though? “I feel honored to be able to do so, and to honor the people that made our country great,” says Parsons.

Military runs in his family. His great-grandfather, Gillespie M. Parsons, served in the Twenty-Fifth Michigan Infantry during the Civil War. While in combat for the Union, Gillespie was shot “in his buttocks,” according to Parsons. “They removed the musket ball and it was eventually made into a watch,” said Parsons. The musket ball was mounted as a pocket-watch charm that Gillespie carried with him and now Parsons hangs onto as a family heirloom of Gillespie’s service.

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The Parsons name may sound familiar as well because his father Kenneth W. Parsons, until 1960, and Larry’s brother Kenneth Earl, into the 1970’s, owned and operated Parsons Plumbing and Heating in Montgomery. He holds onto those memories with a couple of signs from the shop on his garage above the door.

Parsons has served in a number of capacities in Montgomery over the years, living most of his life here. He spent 25 years at Green Giant, retiring at age 52 from there. He was involved as a boy scout and a commander for the Boy Scouts, was on the school board, head of the VFW, a part of the Montgomery Color Guard, and regularly plays “Taps” at events and funerals in the area — as some of his commitment to the country and the community.

He, and his late wife, Karen (Keogh), who passed away suddenly from melanoma cancer in the past few months, were world travelers. The couple was married 56 years, and they have been to all 50 states, 36 countries, and six of the seven continents — as he proudly displays on a basement wall map filled with pins of each place they have gone.

This winter they were set to take a cruise to their final continent, Antartica. Parsons promised to keep that commitment without his wife, and he will be taking one of his daughters with him to complete his mission of making it to every continent.

The couple also wintered in Mercedes, Texas, where they developed a good relationship with the community members of the trailer park they stay in down there. Parsons doesn’t stop his tradition of paying respects by playing “Taps” in the community down there as well.

Although he usually left for Texas after Christmas, upon the insistence from his wife, saying that “they had to spend the holidays here with the children here in Minnesota before we can leave,” according to Parsons. They have four children, three daughters and one son. This year, being alone, wanting the closeness of the community down there, and to not have to shovel snow, he decided that he could leave to go south after his duties are fulfilled Veterans Day.

”It’s a tighter community down there, people are closer together. It can get a little lonely here in the winter, especially without her,” said Parsons.

Since Parsons is leaving to go south today, the community will have to wait until around the first week in April to hear the sound of his bugle in Montgomery again when he returns.