Unsung Heroes

The hot wind was blowing across the distant valley bringing dust, tumbleweeds, and unending waves of heat to the marble and grass oasis.  The widow’s black dress was held down by the grasping hands of her grandchildren who clutched to her legs with tears in their eyes.  Around us the family sniffled and wiped tears from their eyes. 

We were burying the cremains of Sgt. Patrick Neal, a Korean War veteran who had died two weeks before of heart congestion.  Neal had served two years on the frozen front lines of Korea.  He returned to a nation tired of war and pursued a teaching degree with his GI Bill.  He went on to teach and coach football to decades of young men and women at the local high school.  A figurehead in the community, yet few citizens knew it had all begun with a Silver Star and purple heart on a frozen hill half a world away.

With all the patience and sincerity of a kindergarten teacher, my fellow teammate handed the youngest child a small garden trowel and offered to let her drop a small amount of dirt on her “Pappy.”  Several family members took turns while the relentless wind whipped at the funeral party.  It was but one of dozens of unappreciated little “touches” that the staff had perfected while burying dozens of veterans each day at one of the busiest state veteran cemeteries in the nation.

It wasn’t part of VA protocol to allow family to be so close to the interment, but it wasn’t exactly prohibited.  No safety concerns were violated and these little touches allowed for closure by the family.  Moreover, they prompted numerous letters and cards of support, appreciation, and thanks.  It was one of eleven interments we performed that day.  One of hundreds that occurred that day in VA and state veterans cemeteries throughout a grateful nation.

Today, the Washington Post highlighted the results of an interim study by the Department of Veterans Affairs where they partially surveyed the records of 85 of their 131 National Cemeteries in the United State.  In those 85 cemeteries which included over 1.3 million grave sites, they found discrepancies in seven cemeteries. 

The report and survey is still continuing in a number of cemeteries, but the discrepancies were nearly always created during headstone realignment projects nearly a decade ago.  As a cemetery ages, headstones and earth settle and shift as the soil is compacted, erodes, or changes due to a multitude of factors. 

In a traditional cemetery with a panoply of stone monuments of differing shapes and sizes, you’ll rarely see this as a problem.  In a military cemetery, with headstones laid in the recognized row and column pattern, this shifting causes fits for staff to maintain.  For it’s this precise alignment of rows and columns that causes so many to gaze in wonder when they first enter any veteran or military cemetery.

Some might point to the survey, which found less than 100 errors in over 1.13 million grave sites as the human error of the process.  (A true efficiency expert would point to this as almost super-human.)  Yet, of all the people I have ever worked with in these veteran cemeteries, their inhuman ability to carry out that mission would not allow these mistakes. 

The VA has concluded that nearly all of these errors were caused by contractors.  The contractors were directed by standards written into the margins and note sections on blueprints.  The contractors had to understand the mentality of burying our nation’s heroes from plan books and specification documents.  They didn’t see the tears on the faces of the friends and family.  They didn’t hear the sobs of the widower as the casket was lowered.  In these cases of contractor failure, the VA has already identified methods to ensure these mistakes aren’t repeated in the future.  It is incumbent upon Congress and The American Legion to work with VA to ensure these methods are implemented.

Yet, in contrast to the situation at Arlington, where cremains were discovered in a waste pile, original headstones were misplaced and sloppy record-keeping prevented a large-scale review of burial discrepancies, only a handful of unmarked graves or misplaced burials have occurred.  One such discrepancy is one too much.  In these cases, the staff should be investigated and should be subject to the most severe punishment allowed by the system. 

To willfully bury a veteran in the grave of another veteran who had died nearly a century before is the greatest failure of the entire system.  I can hardly imagine a situation where such an action wouldn’t be willful.  And it is in these cases that the staff member has become inhuman.  He or she has forgotten the tears of the friends and the sobs of the family.  In these cases, they need to find a job working at the local park where attention to detail may only affect the Saturday soccer game.  Congress and veteran advocates must guarantee there is no place within the system for these staff.

I rushed to work this morning following an angered outburst upon reading the Washington Post story.  I stewed and fumed over it all the way to work.  Yet after reading the story and report, and after reflecting on the findings, I realized the VA is doing their due diligence to ensure we don’t repeat the mistakes of Arlington.  It is this sort of leadership by VA Undersecretary Muro and others within the National Cemetery Administration that we need.  It is because of this they achieved the highest satisfaction rating of any public or private organization in the 2010 American Customer Satisfaction Index – a rank that has been achieved for four years consecutively.

Danish physicist Niels Bohr proclaimed, “An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.”  While Mr. Bohr was referring to his passion towards discover upon the science of atomic structure and quantum physics, the same should be said upon the passion and expertise of those who work within the hundreds of state and federal veteran cemeteries in our nation.

For today, while you and I sit here in the comfort of our homes and offices, hundreds of men and women are putting on their steel-toed boots, gloves and preparing for another day of burying our nation’s heroes.  No matter how hard the snow may be falling in northern Minnesota, what rains may be pelting the funeral processions in Oregon, or what heat infused winds are blowing across Arizona, they will do it with the pomp and circumstance that has been earned by those who serve a grateful nation.  Amongst these champions who will mow thousands of miles of lawn, lay tons of headstones, and carefully inter thousands of veterans, there are a few who don’t ascribe to the vision we hold for the final resting place of our veterans.  These should be pulled like dandelions from the burial sections.

For those who remain, those men and women who hold offer the small touches in one of the most poignant moments in one’s life, we must take a moment to thank them.  They are on the frontlines of a new effort.  They deserve to be in the headlines of the newspaper.  They soldier each day to sanctify the final resting place of a nation’s heroes – a cause almost as worthy as that which created the Sgt. Neals of our nation.