Editor's Note: A previous version of this story originally appeared in the Summer 2025 issue of Samford Magazine (formerly known as Season). You can read the issue online.
Following years of playing the trumpet in high school and college, Matt Burford, MDiv ’07, DMin ’16, began playing taps on the bugle at funeral services of veterans in his early 20s.
Although Burford doesn’t have a military background, he has a deep appreciation for veterans, as both of his grandfathers served in World War II. Burford also grew up near Fort McClellan in Anniston, with many of his friends coming from military families.
Along the way, Burford came across the organization, Buglers Across America, which works to connect families to buglers for playing taps at military funerals. While it’s possible to use a recorded version of taps that plays from a device placed inside a bugle, it’s not ideal.
“It’s almost too pitch perfect,” Burford said. “It almost doesn’t seem real. Live, real time, incarnational playing is better.”
While this meaningful act of honor is highly sought after by loved ones of military veterans, the number of available buglers has dwindled over the years. “It’s hard to get full accompaniment to most funerals,” Burford said. “In the past, the organization has 85 to 90 buglers, but now there are less than 20.”
Recognizing the “bevy” of trumpet players in area high schools and colleges, Burford, who also serves as an adjunct professor in Samford’s core texts program, began a partner organization, Real Taps for Real Heroes, which raises awareness of the need for buglers and connects them to families in need.
Real Taps for Real Heroes stands beside Bugles Across America in the state of Alabama and possibly beyond, Burford said.
“We want to bring more young people into it and make it an excused absence from school for students,” Burford said.
Burford has also created a $1,000 college scholarship for students who participate.
Burford has connected with state universities, the D-Day Museum in Bedford, Va., along with local VFWs and American Legions.
Burford recently played at the American cemetery in Normandy and at Brittany.
“The soldiers all went to die,” Burford said. “You don’t get a sense of that until you’re there and you see it.”
Even though the experience in France was “incredible,” Burford said the real joy is serving military families at home.
“It pales in comparison to doing it in a rural setting in Alabama for a military family. Seeing what it does for the family moves me,” Burford said. “Anybody can do it with enough practice. And you’re doing it to serve.”
For more information, visit realtapsforrealheroes.com.