Remains of 10 Ohio veterans found are buried

BARBARA RODRIGUEZ

Asso­ci­ated Press

DAYTON — Vet­er­ans and civil­ians stood side by side to honor 10 Ohio vet­er­ans whose remains were buried Tues­day with full mil­i­tary hon­ors, sev­eral months after they were found in a funeral home basement.

Six vet­er­ans con­ducted a rifle salute, taps was played and the name of each of the men and his dates of ser­vice were read at the cer­e­mony under an over­cast sky at Day­ton National Ceme­tery. Some in atten­dance wiped away tears.

Among those who read the names was Richard Royer, a Viet­nam vet­eran and Chapin with the Amer­i­can Legion Post 193 in South Car­olina. He trav­eled 11 hours by motor­cy­cle Mon­day before to make it in time for the ser­vice and bur­ial. He said the crowd of a cou­ple hun­dred peo­ple far sur­passed his expectations.

“Peo­ple have jobs out there,” he said. “But they felt strongly enough about our vet­er­ans that they came out to sup­port them.”

The remains of the men were dis­cov­ered at a Colum­bus funeral home by the Ohio chap­ter of the Miss­ing in Amer­ica Project. The bur­ial was one of sev­eral sched­uled this year for the national group, which con­tacts funeral homes, coro­ners’ offices and state hos­pi­tals in an effort to see if the unclaimed cre­mated remains they have in stor­age may belong to a veteran.

At the end of the ser­vice, sev­eral vet­er­ans took turns pass­ing by the table with the remains, and groups would take turns salut­ing at them. The remains were later buried with a military-issued grave marker.

Chastity Booth, the Ohio coor­di­na­tor for MIAP, spent months arrang­ing the bur­ial to give the Ohio remains a final rest­ing place. She called Tuesday’s cer­e­mony bittersweet.

“It’s bit­ter because it’s taken so long to get here,” Booth said. “It’s sweet because they’re finally here.”

Booth, a 33-year-old stay-at-home mother, dis­cov­ered the remains last year at the Cook & Son-Pallay Funeral Home in Colum­bus, and they were pos­i­tively iden­ti­fied in November.

Once the mil­i­tary records of the men were ver­i­fied, Booth and a hand­ful of vol­un­teers tried to find next of kin by adver­tis­ing in the local news­pa­per and search­ing online data­bases. The group knew only the names of the vet­er­ans, their ser­vice dates and whether they were given any awards.

The remains of 12 vet­er­ans were ini­tially dis­cov­ered, but the fam­i­lies of two vet­er­ans declined the bur­ial. Tues­day marked the first bur­ial for Booth, though two more are sched­uled for this sum­mer as addi­tional vet­er­ans’ remains have recently been found.

Mem­bers of the Amer­i­can Legion Rid­ers led an escort from Colum­bus to the Day­ton ceme­tery about 75 miles away.

Colum­bus res­i­dent Reisa Ker­st­ing, 45, par­tic­i­pated in the escort. She said she’s pleased that peo­ple could come together to show their grat­i­tude and respect.

“I’m glad they were able to retrieve the remains,” she said. “It’s a shame we’ve had so many vet­er­ans that have fallen and passed away.”

Con­gress is con­sid­er­ing leg­is­la­tion that would require the Depart­ment of Vet­er­ans Affairs to rec­og­nize and assist MIAP with the bur­ial of any unclaimed vet­er­ans’ remains. The House bill, intro­duced by Rep. Pat Tiberi of Ohio last year, would ease the group’s rela­tion­ship with funeral home direc­tors con­cerned about insur­ance lia­bil­ity in releas­ing remains. A com­pan­ion Sen­ate bill was intro­duced in March.

Matthew Favrut, a mem­ber of Amer­i­can Legion Post 239 in Wor­thing­ton, said he was hon­ored to par­tic­i­pate in escort­ing the remains.

“It was hum­bling,” the 58-year-old said. “It was hum­bling to pay trib­ute to peo­ple who have helped to pro­tect us and our free­dom in this coun­try. It’s not some­thing you get a chance to do every day.”

Posted by AP News on May 22 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.