Daughter of unclaimed Ohio veteran steps forward

BARBARA RODRIGUEZ

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — The daugh­ter of an Air Force vet­eran whose cre­mated remains lay unclaimed for years along­side those of about a dozen other ser­vice­men at a funeral home said she finds clo­sure in know­ing sev­eral groups want a bur­ial includ­ing full mil­i­tary hon­ors for him.

Julie Dick­er­son, the daugh­ter of Staff Sgt. Rus­sell Andrews Jr., said her fam­ily rec­og­nized his name dur­ing a news tele­cast about a mil­i­tary bur­ial being pre­pared for the unclaimed remains of 10 Ohio veterans.

“I was sur­prised and kind of shocked,” she said. “But in a good way.”

Dick­er­son said she plans to attend the May 22 bur­ial at Day­ton National Ceme­tery. The bur­ial is being coor­di­nated by the Miss­ing in Amer­ica Project, a national group that seeks unclaimed vet­er­ans’ remains so they can be laid to rest with full mil­i­tary honors.

The remains of 12 vet­er­ans were dis­cov­ered, but the fam­i­lies of two vet­er­ans declined the burial.

Dick­er­son, a 46-year-old from Colum­bus, said she finds clo­sure in the Miss­ing in Amer­ica Project’s efforts to bury her father’s remains.

“Clo­sure really is the word to best describe the expe­ri­ence,” she said. “To see he has an appro­pri­ate memo­r­ial service.”

Dick­er­son, who said she and her two sib­lings were not in daily con­tact with their father when he died in 1991 of heart fail­ure, did not know his remains were on a base­ment shelf of a Colum­bus funeral home for more than 20 years. She said they were noti­fied of his death only months later and assumed there was noth­ing left for them to do.

The Miss­ing in Amer­ica Project’s Ohio coor­di­na­tor, Chastity Booth, said she was sur­prised when she spoke to Dick­er­son on Tues­day. Booth said in an ear­lier inter­view it was unlikely any rel­a­tives would step for­ward before the bur­ial because the story of the unclaimed vet­er­ans had received exten­sive media expo­sure since they were iden­ti­fied in November.

“We’re thrilled,” Booth said. “And for chil­dren to step for­ward? We totally didn’t expect this. My day has been made.”

Booth, a 33-year-old stay-at-home mother, dis­cov­ered the vet­er­ans’ remains at the Cook & Son-Pallay Funeral Home in Colum­bus. She and a hand­ful of other vol­un­teers had tried to find the vet­er­ans’ next of kin by adver­tis­ing in the local news­pa­per and search­ing online data­bases. She said the group knew the vet­er­ans’ names, ser­vice dates and whether they earned any awards.

Before Dick­er­son stepped for­ward on Tues­day, no fam­ily from the 10 remain­ing vet­er­ans had con­tacted them.

The Miss­ing in Amer­ica Project is coor­di­nat­ing the bur­ial with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Amer­i­can Legion’s 12th Coun­cil. Hun­dreds of peo­ple are expected to attend the two-hour ser­vice, which will include a 21-gun salute and military-issued grave mark­ers for each veteran.

Mem­bers of the Amer­i­can Legion Rid­ers will lead an early morn­ing pro­ces­sion from the funeral home in Colum­bus to the ceme­tery in Day­ton, 75 miles west.

Booth said there are finan­cial and per­sonal rea­sons why fam­i­lies don’t claim remains, includ­ing fam­i­lies los­ing con­tact or no liv­ing fam­ily mem­bers remaining.

Miss­ing in Amer­ica Project vice pres­i­dent Linda Smith said funeral home direc­tors often hold onto the remains because they don’t want them scat­tered or buried in potter’s fields, bur­ial plots for unknown or low-income people.

“They don’t feel that’s what should hap­pen to them,” she said. “So they hold on to them. And that’s good for us. It’s good for the vet­er­ans. Because they give us the oppor­tu­nity to go in, find them, iden­tify them and give them a full mil­i­tary hon­ors funeral.”

Smith said the group has found almost 2,000 unclaimed vet­er­ans’ remains in funeral homes around the coun­try since its start in 2006 and has been able to bury most of them.

Cook & Son-Pallay Funeral Home direc­tor Dan Pal­lay said that before a 1999 state law placed guide­lines on how funeral homes bury unclaimed cre­mated remains, many kept them in their basements.

“Every funeral home that I’ve heard of has a few unclaimed ashes,” he said. “We were happy to inven­tory the ashes that were still here with us and see whether any were veterans.”

Smith said the Miss­ing in Amer­ica Project works with funeral homes to send let­ters to unclaimed vet­er­ans’ next of kin explain­ing their efforts to bury the remains and waits 30 days before mov­ing for­ward with bur­ial plans. She said the bur­ial is a free ser­vice at any national or state ceme­tery if the vet­eran was hon­or­ably dis­charged from the military.

Fed­eral leg­is­la­tion to ease com­mu­ni­ca­tion between funeral homes and groups like the Miss­ing in Amer­ica Project was intro­duced last year, but deter­min­ing whether cre­mated remains belong to a vet­eran still can take months, and Booth said she needs more vol­un­teers to speed up the process.

“I’ve seen first­hand what kind of sac­ri­fices these men and women make for their coun­try,” she said. “They made that kind of sac­ri­fice for us. It’s the least we could do, in terms of mak­ing sure we find those that were lost or forgotten.”

Posted by AP News on Apr 11 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.