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Midnight Special
Emerald Society pipers put on a late show to accentuate Police Week
Tom Gallas makes his loop around the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial on the night he performed as the Midnight Piper.
n BY MITCHELL KRUGEL
Fourteen minutes of bagpiping played on for what seemed like forever to Tom Gallas, a piper for the Bagpipes and Drums of the Emerald Society Chicago Police Department. By a quarter past midnight, Gallas had completed a stop- off around the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, passing all 21,000- plus names of sisters and brothers lost in the line of duty inscribed on its walls.
As part of the National Police Week rit- ual known as the “Midnight Piper,” Gallas made time stand still when he stopped to play for nearly 50 officers from the Cov- ington Police Department in Kentucky. As “Irish Soldier Boy” echoed through the Memorial, the Covington crew raised a shot of whiskey to toast one of their own who was lost in 2017.
“Fantastic,” Gallas exclaimed. “I like
Gallas stops at a spot on the Memorial wall where the name of a friend of the band lost in the line of duty is inscribed.
36 CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ JUNE 2018