NEW SCOTLAND — When the drum and bugle corps formed in 1927, Richard Stickley’s father, a World War I Navy veteran, was in it.  Years later, when Stickley had become a Navy veteran after World War II, he joined the group, now called the Yankee Doodle Band.  At 82, the former percussionist still plays the cymbals while his daughter and granddaughter play the clarinet and piccolo.

Last Saturday, Stickley, who lives in New Scotland, was flown to Washington, D.C. with several other area veterans to visit the World War II memorial.  The Yankee Doodle Band played for them at the Albany airport.  The trip was sponsored by a group called Patriot Flight.  It was “rewarding in itself” to take the trip with his fellow veterans, he said, and seeing the monument “brings back memories.”  There were “things that just get you thinking again,” he said.