A final salute: Missing In America Project gives veterans final honors

More than 100 people waited in the shaded pews of Patriot Plaza for the hearse to arrive to pay respect to 11 individuals they never met. The hearse was a few minutes late. But the individuals — seven veterans and four spouses of veterans — whose ashes the vehicle carried had already waited long enough. The 10 minutes seemed trivial. 
 

On Nov. 5, a week before Veterans Day, the Missing In America Project brought the veterans and spouses to their final resting place at Sarasota National Cemetery with full military honors. 

“I feel like I know them, but I really don’t know their lives,” said Lynne Ouellette, a volunteer for MIAP in the Sarasota-Bradenton area. “That there are veterans or spouses and for them to be left unclaimed just tears up my heart.” 

Burial in any of the country’s 133 national cemeteries is an honor available to any man or woman who honorably served and their spouses. But it’s an honor that many veterans never receive. 

Instead, their cremated remains linger unclaimed at funeral homes across the country. The Missing In America Project tracks down the remains of veterans and their spouses who are eligible for burial at a national cemetery. 
 

At last week’s ceremony, 22 volunteers lined up two-by-two to receive the urns from the hearse as members of the Sarasota Veterans of Foreign Wars stood at attention. 

One individual who was buried, Seaman 1st Class Rennis Jones Taylor, who served in World War II, had been waiting since 1992 to be buried.

To date, MIAP has identified 2,810 cremated remains of veterans and interred 2,557. The ceremony was MIAP’s first Sarasota ceremony. The service was in the works for almost four years, according to Sarasota National Cemetery Director John Rosentrater.

“Today is the culmination of a lot of work, research and cooperation with these remains,” Rosentrater said. “For every veteran, our goal is to provide an honorable burial as a shrine.”

Kathy Church, MIAP state coordinator, with the help from volunteers, contacts funeral homes about unclaimed remains — many of which have been there for years.

“Nobody should be there, but especially not veterans who have served their country,” Church said.

The reasons vary for why so many remains go unclaimed. Sometimes, they are the last in their family to die, or they’ve grown distant from family members. Often, the remains are of homeless veterans.

Ouellette has been working for six months with Sarasota and Bradenton funeral homes to locate veterans and spouses who were eligible to be buried at Sarasota National Cemetery.

The ceremony was a community effort that included volunteers, local veteran organizations and military chaplains.

Gary Williams, of Sarasota Veterans of Foreign Wars, felt a personal connection to a fellow Vietnam veteran who was buried.

“The country didn’t appreciate them when they returned,” Williams said. “They finally got the respect that they deserved.”

“For some reason they went unclaimed,” said guest speaker retired U.S. Air Force Chaplain Col. Charles Caudill. “So today they come home and we welcome them...with a final salute.”