Jefferson County veterans give proper burial to homeless
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Monday, March 7, 2011
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HILLSBORO • When his fellow Navy sailors perished during the Korean War, Carl Norton sang "Eternal Father, Strong to Save" for the burials at sea that were sometimes necessary.
He was a chaplain's assistant then, charged with helping arrange the music for those funerals.
Norton is 84 now. He's a retired pastor who lives in rural Hillsboro.
And he still sings that song, known as the Navy Hymn, at burials. The veterans he sings for these days were homeless in life, their bodies unclaimed in death.
He's a member of the Korean War Veterans Association chapter in Jefferson County. About 20 men from that chapter have attended each of the more than 80 services held at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery as part of the Dignity Memorial Homeless Veterans Burial Program.
The program is in its 10th year and makes sure that homeless veterans get a proper military burial and are not interred in unmarked graves.
The program was born in St. Louis and has spread across the country, burying more than 900 homeless veterans in the last decade, according to the Dignity Memorial, a provider of funeral, cremation and cemetery services.
Dignity Memorial pays to prepare, clothe and transport the body, buys the casket and coordinates the funeral service. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs provides the opening and closing of the grave site, a grave liner, a headstone or marker and burial in a national cemetery.
"We feel like they deserve that honor," Norton said.
Today, he and the other veterans in his chapter will be the ones honored when the Jefferson County Council pays tribute to the group with a proclamation in appreciation of its work.
"When you have a group that steps up to the plate and provides that for these veterans, that's phenomenal," said Jefferson County Executive Ken Waller.
He expects about 100 people to attend a ceremony in the group's honor at 1:30 p.m. at the County Administration Building in Hillsboro.
Bill Branson, a retired major general in the Army Reserve who lives in rural Hillsboro, helped start the program. Without it, homeless vets would end up in a pauper's grave lacking even a headstone, a prospect that Branson and his fellow veterans couldn't stomach.
The only requirement for homeless veterans to receive the burial service is that they were honorably discharged.
Families of these dead veterans seldom attend the burials. Most of the time, the veterans who do the burials know next to nothing about the man they're laying to rest.
The Korean War veterans are the only local group that provides burials for homeless veterans at Jefferson Barracks, said Jeff Barnes, the cemetery's director,
"They do a tremendous job," Barnes said.
Each service lasts about 20 minutes. The Korean veterans are pallbearers. There's always an honor guard and a bugler to play taps. Sometimes, there's a bagpiper.
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