The Final Note: Bugler Retires From Army Fife and Drum Corps

Reentering civilian life

Many men and women who have worn the colors of our nation have qualms about leaving the armed services. A soldier’s life is inherently regimented by the chain of command. Orders is orders, as is said. So Creadon has had to go whenever duty called.

Duty called him and the corps to the Capitol for presidential inaugurations and to the White House for the arrival ceremonies for state visitors such as foreign leaders, popes and Queen Elizabeth II. He fondly remembers standing at attention on the South Lawn as presidents inspected the troops at close range, but memory fails as to whether the papal performance was for Pope Benedict in 2008 or Francis in 2015.

Creadon also has sounded his bugle at George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate on Presidents’ Day, at the Pearl Harbor National Memorial in Hawaii, at the Tomb of the Unknown Revolutionary Soldier in Philadelphia, at Colonial Williamsburg and at Yorktown, Virginia, where the surrender of British Gen. Charles Cornwallis in 1781 to American and allied French forces effectively ended the War of Independence.

Time travel

“If you go down to Williamsburg [once the capital of colonial Virginia] or Yorktown and those kinds of places, you really feel like you are in the moment,” he says.

Music is his genes. His father, who played the saxophone in a wedding band, died at age 35 from Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Creadon was only 4, but his father’s passion lived on.

In fourth grade, Creadon was in a music store weighing whether to play the trombone or the trumpet, which is similar to a bugle. He picked the trumpet and “was fairly successful just off the bat.”

A teacher’s prophesy

His promise drew note. His junior high school band director — “he was really into the military” — taught him a bugle call, “To the Colors,” and urged him to “get into a military band someday.”

“I was just kind of nodding my head,” Creadon remembers, “and never thinking much of it.”

During college he performed for four years with Ohio State University’s Marching Band, the “Pride of the Buckeyes.” He has an undergraduate degree in audio recording and a master’s in brass pedagogy from Ohio State.

Addicted to running

Before college, Creadon was advised to start running to get in shape for marching up and down a football field. He started jogging in his driveway and graduated to running in his cul-de-sac. Decades later, he has competed in more than 50 marathons. His best time: 3 hours, 12 minutes, 50 seconds. A fixture at the annual Army Ten-Milers, Creadon also completed a 5K, 10K, half marathon and marathon —  48-plus miles in all — over four consecutive days at Walt Disney World in 2015.

“I’m kind of a nuts runner,” he admits.

The next year, Creadon was back at Disney World to perform with the Fife and Drum Corps when Prince Harry hosted his Invictus Games for wounded warriors.  

When not putting on shows — or running — Creadon composes music, teaches at a community college and keeps a hand in audio engineering, video editing and photography. He works part-time photographing newborns and their families before they leave the hospital.

Music will remain an integral part of his life — teaching, composing and playing. He has played with the Alexandria-based Virginia Grand Military Band, composed of former members of Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine bands, and is considering an encore with the orchestra.

His many passions portend an active retirement. “Maybe I'll do several different part-time things,” he says, noting he’s pleased at the prospect of a military pension, although calling it quits will means a drop in income compared to the pay of a sergeant first class with 26 years in.

In retirement, will be missed

The corps will miss his bad “dad jokes” and upbeat, generous spirit, says Sgt. 1st Class Erin McHale, a fifer who doubles as the corps’ public affairs officer.

“He had such a good attitude,” McHale, 30, says. “He had the ability to kind of like knock you out of your headspace if you were in … a bad headspace.”

“He is possibly,” she adds, “the most philanthropic person I know.”

Creadon has donated blood, platelets or plasma 298 times. He is helping with a virtual fundraiser for a children’s hospital and urges donations, not retirement gifts. He doesn’t want a party, either.

Downsizing is one reason he’s discouraging gifts. He and his wife plan to sell their condo and have a tiny house built on five acres they own along the Potomac River. A tiny house in Maryland means he won’t be far from the Fife and Drum Corps, a tight-knit group whose personnel grow close since they aren’t subject to back-to-back relocations like other troops.

“We've got our rank and everything,” he says of the corps, “but we tend to be a little bit more a family.”