Military Cremation Urns and Flag Case

In the U.S., we honor the veterans of our Armed Forces for their service and their sacrifice. The cost of serving one’s country is great, after all; military personnel typically face financial hardship, prolonged separation from their loved ones, and tremendous risk of physical, mental or emotional illness and injury. Some pay the ultimate price, dying in service to their country.

But many veterans die in poverty, and while the U.S. government provides funeral benefits for qualifying veterans, gaining access to those benefits can be a challenge. In many cases, families may not know or understand the benefits their loved one is entitled to, or they may not know how to claim them.

Kindness and Gratitude, Multiplied
A couple of years ago, Andy Scheid, of Andrew T. Scheid Funeral Home in Millersville, Pennsylvania, learned of a World War II veteran who had died penniless. Scheid was moved by the veteran’s unfortunate circumstance to provide, at no charge, a burial with full military honors, even ensuring that the deceased, a Purple Heart recipient, had a proper suit to wear.

As a result of that experience and his determination to help other veterans and their families, Scheid became a provider of Veterans Funeral Care (VFC) services.

Veterans Funeral Care
Founded in Clearwater, Florida as “the first full-service funeral home in America built to serve the veteran and military community,” VFC has grown into a network of more than 100 providers, all dedicated to assisting loved ones with every detail of cremation and funeral arrangements for veterans and their families. Beyond coordinating funeral logistics, VFC also assists families in applying for all applicable veterans’ benefits, Social Security benefits, and life insurance and arranging military honors.

Veterans Funeral Care purports to save families up to 40% on the cost of a traditional funeral or cremation. A good part of that savings comes from taking advantage of available veterans’ benefits, such as burial in a national cemetery. All honorably discharged veterans and their spouses and dependent children are entitled to a free burial plot, cemetery marker and burial vault at any national cemetery, which can add up to a savings of $6,000, according to the VFC website. With the cost of a traditional funeral often exceeding $10,000 in the U.S., the average cost of just under $3,800 for a VFC funeral is a godsend for many veterans and their families.

“Private or general, you’re all the same”
Scheid, whose interest in veterans’ causes stems from his father’s service during the Korean War era, says his primary goal is to make sure veterans’ families are aware of all the benefits they’re entitled to. “(T)he majority of veterans are not wealthy people. Whether you’re a private or a general, you’re all the same,” says Scheid.

Eligibility for Burial at Sea
According to information on the U.S. Navy’s website, those who are eligible for burial at sea include “Active duty, retired, honorably discharged veterans and their family members, U.S. civilian marine personnel of Military Sealift Command, other U.S. citizens who are determined eligible by the Chief of Naval Operations because of notable service and/or other contributions to our government.”

Petty Officer 2nd Class Whit Sloane is the burial-at-sea coordinator with the Navy’s Office Of Mortuary Affairs and one of only 16 Navy morticians. According to Sloane, the Navy receives about 500 to 600 requests each year for burial at sea, and almost all of them are granted. Sloane says that while most of the requests come from Navy retirees or veterans, “we get requests from all branches of the military.”

Burial-at-Sea Requirements
Families must meet specific requirements for a burial at sea, and while the Navy doesn’t charge for its services, families are responsible for any related costs, including expenses related to preparation of the body and transportation. If the deceased is to be buried in a casket, for example, the remains must be prepared by a funeral home, and the casket must be made of metal, with 150 pounds of weight added to the foot of the casket to ensure it sinks feet-first to the ocean floor. The remains must then be transported to Norfolk, Virginia or San Diego, California, the only Navy ports from which burials at sea are conducted.

Because the burial ceremony is held on a naval vessel while deployed on official maneuvers, family members are not allowed onboard for the burial. The crew will typically photograph or videotape the ceremony, however, and afterward, the Navy will present the family with the flags used during the ceremony, as well as the shells from the rounds fired during the salute and navigational charts that mark the location of the burial.

To learn more about the burial-at-sea program, visit the Navy’s website at http://www.navy.mil/navydata/questions/burial.html.

Photo by Rob Finch “The Oregonian”

In the basements of funeral homes, hospitals and coroners’ offices across the country, plastic bags and cans containing the unclaimed cremated remains of thousands of humans sit on shelves, collecting dust. Some have been there for years or even decades. Many of them belong to U.S. military veterans.

This shameful secret has come to light in recent years, largely due to the discovery of nearly 3,500 containers of ashes in the dark corners of an Oregon psychiatric hospital. There, the tin “urns,” dented, rusted and water damaged, were stacked like so many cans of old paint on shelves labeled with masking tape. According to one estimate, as many as 1,000 of them may contain the cremains of deceased veterans.

How could this happen in a country where we claim to honor our veterans and the service they gave to protect our way of life?

The answer to that question lies in a complex tangle of bureaucratic red tape, strained relationships and financial distress. Some of the deceased had no known survivors, while some families simply failed to claim the cremains of their dead. At the Oregon psychiatric hospital, some of the ashes belonged to patients who died around the turn of the 20th century and were buried in the hospital’s cemetery. Their bodies were later exhumed and cremated to free the cemetery land for other purposes.

Righting the Wrong

Military Cremation Urns

The Missing in America Project (MIA) is a volunteer organization whose mission is to “locate, identify and inter the unclaimed cremated remains of American veterans” and “provide honor and respect to those who have served this country by securing a final resting place for these forgotten heroes.”

MIA is working to accomplish its goals through long-term, exhaustive searches conducted in cooperation with the American Legion and other volunteer and veterans’ organizations, funeral homes, state funeral commissions, state and national veterans administration agencies, and state and national veterans’ cemetery administrations. MIA is also spearheading a second-phase effort to ensure that, from now on, the remains of every veteran who dies will be identified, claimed and interred in a timely manner, with all the respect and honor due to those who have served our country so well.