Peter Cranson has played the Last Post at Anzac Day commemorative services for more than five decades, including since he and his wife moved to Tauranga in 2000.
The 69-year-old said has been playing the cornet and trumpet for 60 years.
"I first played the Last Post in Palmerston North square in 1960, then in Hamilton, and since moving to Tauranga in 2000, I have played at every dawn parade at the Tauranga RSA cenotaph and at the civic services, he said.
"I always find the experience a moving occasion. It's a time I think about my father-in-law who served as a gunner for four years in the Middle East during the Battle of El Alamein, and came home wounded and shattered," he said.
Mr Cranson said his father-in-law Private Gunner Beresford Primrose headed overseas
in 1939 at age 29, and returned home in 1943 with serious shrapnel wounds to his legs.