WEST POINT - Key Persons
Daniel Adams Butterfield (31 October 1831-17 July 1901) was born in Utica, New York and graduated from Union College at Schenectady. He was the eastern superintendent of the American Express Company in New York when the Civil War broke out. Despite his lack of military experience, he rose quickly in rank. A Colonel in the 12th Regiment of the New York State Militia, he was promoted to Brigadier General and given command of a brigade of the V Corps of the Army of the Potomac. The 12th served in the Shenandoah Valley during the the Bull Run Campaign. During the Peninsular Campaign Butterfield served prominently when during the Battle of Gaines Mill, despite an injury, he seized the colors of the 83rd Pennsylvania and rallied the regiment at a critical time in the battle. Years later, he was awarded the Medal of Honor for that act of heroism.
As the story goes, General Butterfield was not pleased with the call for Extinguish Lights feeling that the call was too formal to signal the days end and with the help of the brigade bugler, Oliver Willcox Norton, wrote Taps to honor his men while in camp at Harrison's Landing, Virginia, following the Seven Day's battle. These battles took place during the Peninsular Campaign of 1862. The call, sounded that night in July, 1862, soon spread to other units of the Union Army and was even used by the Confederates. Taps was made an official bugle call after the war.
The highly romantic account of how Butterfield composed the call surfaced in 1898 following a magazine article written that summer. The August, 1898 issue of Century Magazine contained an article called The Trumpet in Camp and Battle, by Gustav Kobbe, a music historian and critic. He was writing about the origin of bugle calls in the Civil War and in reference to Taps, wrote:
In speaking of our trumpet calls I purposely omitted one with which it seemed most appropriate to close this article, for it is the call which closes the soldier's day. . . . Lights Out. I have not been able to trace this call to any other service. If it seems probable, it was original with Major Seymour, he has given our army the most beautiful of all trumpet-calls.
Kobbe was using as an authority the Army drill manual on infantry tactics prepared by Major General Emory Upton in 1867 (revised in 1874). The bugle calls in the manual were compiled by Major (later General) Truman Seymour of the 5th U.S. Artillery. Taps was called Extinguish Lights in these manuals since it was to replace the Lights Out call disliked by Butterfield. The title of the call was not changed until later, although other manuals started calling it Taps because most soldiers knew it by that name. Since Seymour was responsible for the music in the Army manual, Kobbe assumed that he had written the call. Kobbe s inability to find the origin of Extinguish Lights (Taps) prompted a letter from Oliver W. Norton in Chicago who claimed he knew how the call came about and that he was the first to perform it.
Dian Welle, a retired RN, MICN, has the unique position of being an Advisor and one of our two paid employees. She tends to the day-to-day needs of our community through our feedback ( feedback@west-point.org ) address.
She and her Husband Dan are the parents of a West Point graduate, class of 2002. Debbi, their youngest child, has been deployed five times. She is currently a Physician's Assistant , stationed at Guantanamo Bay Cuba.
Dian started her association with WP-ORG after building a site for her family, who had never seen the Academy. The "2002 Memory Page" gained popularity with the parents of the class, within 2 months had over 10,000 visits, and many of the parents were contributing to it. That page began a trend for each class of parents to start their own sites. Dian has worked in collaboration with other parents and grads to create the WP-ORG Bicentennial site. http://www.west-point.org/family/bicent/. The Bicentennial site brought Dian and Dick Breakiron (USMA '51) together to build the tradition pages within that site. Quickly realizing the value of the stories they were receiving from Grads, the idea to put these into a book was formed. The book Memories and Traditions, The Real West Point Story was published in 2002.
Dian and Dan have four children and eight grandchildren. They have a home in Priest River, Idaho. Dian, having worked in major trauma centers, and critical emergency rooms for 23 years, is enjoying her more relaxing job with WP-ORG. Her off-time love is devoted to the training, showing and and breeding of Labrador Retrievers . With her new found interest in computer work, she is lucky to have Dan, who tends to the kennel work, while she fiddles with the computer.
Megan Hostler resides in Ridgefield, Connecticut - a location which has been very enjoyable over the years as it's allowed the Hostlers to enjoy frequent trips to West Point….. initially as visits to husband, Dutch's (USMA 1968) alma mater, and later as opportunities to visit with sons, David (USMA 2004) and Christopher (USMA 2007). While the "boodle and laundry runs" are a thing of the past, Megan and Dutch' volunteer activities still have them heading over to West Point frequently.
After several years practicing law for the Department of Justice, Megan turned her attention to volunteer activities, and enjoys her work with USMA Admissions, the Blue Star Mothers of Northern Fairfield County and Help Our Military Heroes, Inc., a 501(c)(3) non profit corporation whose mission is to help our deployed and wounded soldiers.
As a volunteer for West Point.Org, Megan currently serves as a co-moderator of Parent Forum and Plebe Net. She is also a relief moderator for Prospective-Net and Gray-Net.
Warren Hearnes '89 currently serves as CIO of WP-ORG. He lives in Lilburn, GA. After serving in the field artillery as a FSO, FDO, and Platoon Leader, Warren resigned from the Army and entered graduate school. He completed his M.S. in Operations Research and Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering at Georgia Tech. He has applied his OR skills to manufacturing optimization at Lucent Technologies, data mining and advanced analytics at UPS, and marketing analytics at The Home Depot. He is currently with a Cardlytics, successful start-up in Atlanta.
Warren and his wife, Dominique, have two sons - Luke and Michael. He also enjoys golf and motorcycle riding.
As a volunteer for West-Point.ORG, Warren programs many of the applications and services that WP-ORG provides, as well as maintaining the Class of '89 and West Point Society of Atlanta web pages.