When we lived at the Fairfax Road house in Cleveland Mom decided to bring some more culture to our lives and strum Dad's nostalgic strings by giving him a trumpet for either Christmas or his birthday. I don't know when he had played it earlier in his life, but he was sure that playing the trumpet was like riding a bike--once you learned how to do it you never forgot how. Dad practiced his lip-buzzing (I think it was a good excuse to smooch with Mom and give us girls Bugs Bunny kisses) then applied his improved embouchure to morning reveille. It was awful to begin with, then much improved but annoying over time. I'm sure that Dad felt justified in using this cruel and unusual punishment to get us up for family prayer and scripture study, which is a testimony to the fact that he took his priesthood responsibilities seriously. We were all relieved when Mom gave him a mute a year or so later. I remember a 4th of July flag raising ceremony where Dad played a rather stirring patriotic melody, after which I felt that he should retire the trumpet on a high note. Although he never reached a performance level worthy of Tommy Dorsey, Dad's ingenuity in using his trumpet to advance his musical prowess while ensuring that his children were doers of the word (if only in body) at the risk of their eardrums should certainly qualify him for a Purple Heart or a Grammy (or at least a Grampy), and lots of brownie points in heaven.