Alert: States are Now Burying Unclaimed Vets as They Deserve Honor

Alert: States are Now Burying Unclaimed Vets as They Deserve Honor

Fred Salanti, founder of the Missing in America Project of Redding CA, has a list of nearly 250,000 names long: veterans whose remains sit on shelves around America, unclaimed and forgotten.

23 Veteran's remains were removed from the county morgue and were honored with a military burial at a National Cemetary in Pennsylvania . On Thursday May 15, 2014, a team of volunteers buried 26 veterans with military honors in the National Cemetery of the Alleghenies in Cecil, Pennsylvania.The ceremony on Thursday started with a procession leaving the Pittsburgh Institute of Mortuary Science on Baum Boulevard in East Liberty. It reached the national military cemetery about an hour later.

A North Dakota native, Shumway served with the Army’s 14th Cavalry in World War I, from May 1917 to September 1919. He was 86 when he died March 31, 1980, in Grand Rapids, MI, forgotten and alone.

Shumway’s ashes were placed on a shelf in the Matthysse-Kuiper-DeGraaf Funeral Home in Wyoming, MI, where they sat undisturbed and all but unnoticed for three and a half decades since had had out-lived his relatives. 

Today on May 26, Shumway’s remains – along with those of four other Michigan soldiers – were led through downtown Dearborn, MI, in a horse-drawn carriage as part of that city’s Memorial Day observance. These Vets were given the full dignity of a military burial; they will lie in state at a special remembrance ceremony, received a 21-gun salute and were serenaded by a bugler playing “Taps” before they were laid to their eternal rest.

Also today May 26, 2014, Seven veterans whose cremated remains have been in Michigan funeral homes for years because they died without money for burial were honored Monday in a Detroit suburb at their local parade. Their remains are being transferred to the Great Lakes National Cemetery in Michigan this week. 

The news broke this week that over 250 bodies have been in the LA Morgue for the past year. Confirmed that 23 Remains of Veterans are being transferred to the Riverside National Cermemony for a honorable burial later this week. This had nothing to do with Federal Government intervention but the County decided it was time to bury these men honorably.

Procedure: The Veteran's Affairs confirm the Veteran's service and schedules the funeral. They either get a casket or are creamated and has an engraved headstone and a plot. There is no charge for the Veteran's family for this ceremony. The scheduling only takes 3 days and not years!!! 

Thanks to Fred and the Missing in America Project..... many Veterans are getting the burial they truly deserve. God Bless the Men and Women who have fought to keep this country free and truly deserves to be buried at a National Cemetary in the US.

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