Palatine female veteran and bugler among few of her kind

Having retired twice, veteran Mary Arvidson these days does only the things she enjoys - chief among them playing taps with her bugle at military funerals and ceremonies.

"It's quite an honor is what it is. It's the last military honor that someone gets after their life," said Arvidson, 66, of Palatine.

"A lot of times you're honoring someone who with their military service might have been three years in the Army in World War II, or something like that. It's not like you're honoring someone who had this big, illustrious career. But this is someone who was willing to go out and honor and serve their country, and it makes me very proud to be able to give that last bit of respect."

Her bugling keeps her busy. Last year she played taps at about 120 funerals and ceremonies for the U.S. Navy and as a volunteer for Bugles Across America and Taps for Veterans, traveling to Chicago and the suburbs, northern Indiana and southern Wisconsin, she said.

The COVID-19 pandemic has put that on hold, but she was looking forward to Saturday night, when she was scheduled to play taps at Trickster Cultural Center in Schaumburg. The center is hosting the National Gathering of American Indian Veterans mostly virtually with a small in-person component, she said.

Arvidson is among few of her kind - most buglers are men and there aren't that many to begin with, she said. "There is always a shortage, unfortunately," she said.

Tom Day, who founded Berwyn-based Bugles Across America about 20 years ago, said the group numbers about 450 volunteer buglers in Illinois, and only 35 to 40 - less than 1 in 10 - are women. Still, the number of female buglers has grown over the years, he said. Altogether the group has 5,000 volunteers across the United States.

Arvidson grew up in Niles and after high school she served in the U.S. Army for five years. She studied law enforcement at the University of Illinois at Chicago and had a 25-year career in public safety, including as a community service officer, dispatcher and IT specialist for a 911 call center.

Also a member of the U.S. Navy Reserves, she was called to active duty, she said, so she retired in 2008 from her career in public safety. She then served as command master chief for the Defense Intelligence Agency and as reserve liaison officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, both in Washington, D.C., until her retirement in 2012, she said.

She is also a member of American Legion Post 964 in Lake Zurich, an active volunteer with St. Theresa Catholic Church in Palatine, and loves helping out with her 21 grandnieces and grandnephews. "I'm trying to be a properly busy retiree," she said.

Arvidson said she started playing the trumpet in 6th grade, thinking that with only three keys, it would be easier than the saxophone. She took up the bugle - which has no keys and is difficult to learn in the beginning - about 15 years ago, when she found out there was a need for buglers.

"The guys who were doing the funeral honors detail told me it was very depressing to use a recording of taps. They would have much preferred to have a bugler there," she said. "I always like to think that when it's played live, there is a little more heart in it."

Taps is known to make people cry, which doesn't bother her. "I always say that if they cry, they needed to cry, and it's just helping them having the proper feeling at that time and in that situation."