Every Year on 9/11 Oneida County Court Bailiff Plays Taps Five Times

Every year on September 11th, Belinda Manning, Oneida County Sheriff's Office Court Bailiff, plays taps five times, once for each time the planes crashed and the final time for all the lives lost.

Manning is a member of Bugles Across America and says she's performed at different locations over the years, including cemeteries throughout central New York. This year she continues the tradition outside the Rome Police Department.

“Taps” is 24 notes that tap our emotions. It originally began as a signal to extinguish lights. Up until the Civil War, the infantry call for “Extinguish Lights” was the one set down in the Infantry manuals which had been borrowed from the French. The music for “Taps” was changed by Major General Daniel Adams Butterfield for his brigade in July, 1862.

It was believed the general wrote the call while his brigade was camped in Confederate territory at Harrison’s Landing on the banks of the James River in Virginia following the Seven Days Battle. Brigade bugler, Oliver W. Norton, first sounded the call there.

Years later, in 1898, Norton wrote about the creation and première of “Taps.” He claimed that General Butterfield showed him some notes on a staff written in pencil on the back of an envelope and asked him to play them.