Posted on 01/27/2019 1:48:45 PM PST by Kaslin
A central Texas cemetery is turning a sad story into a happier ending. The staff of Central Texas State Veterans Cemetery is extending an invitation to anyone in the area to attend a funeral for an unaccompanied veteran Monday. A United States Air Force veteran, Joseph Walker, will be laid to rest at 10:00 A.M. with full military honors. As no next of kin is in the picture, a representative of the Veterans Land Board will accept the American flag on the veteran’s behalf. The Veterans Land Board runs the cemetery.
An invitation to the public to attend this funeral is based on the sentiment that no veteran should be buried alone. The cemetery extended the invitation on their Facebook page.
We have the distinct honor to provide a full military burial for unaccompanied United States Air Force Veteran Joseph Walker on MONDAY, JANUARY 28, 2019 at 10:00 a.m. at Central Texas State Veterans Cemetery. If you have the opportunity, please come out and attend. We do NOT leave Veterans behind 🇺🇸
The cemetery staff has been unable to locate any family members, and that is why the call has been put out to the community in Killeen, Texas. Walker served in the U.S. Air Force between September 1964 and September 1968. Lots of people have jumped in to guarantee the word gets outs and the Vietnam veteran isn’t buried alone, from politicians to national media figures.
Monday, January 28
10:00 am
Central Texas State Veterans Cemetery
11463 TX-195
Killeen, TX 76542— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) January 26, 2019
ATTN TEXANS
No one is expected to attend the funeral for Joseph Walker, who served in the US Air Force 1964-1968.
His funeral will take place Monday at 10 a.m. at the Central Texas State Cemetery.
11463 SH 195
Killeen, Texas 76542 https://t.co/9J29luwDQC via @KVUE— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) January 27, 2019
Funerals for unaccompanied veterans happen more frequently than you might think. Often members of local veterans groups attend the funerals.
Since 2000, Dignity Memorial and other funeral homes in more than 30 cities have organized about 3,000 funerals for soldiers, sailors and Marines who died alone, but still deserved a dignified funeral and burial, said Jeff Berry, Dignity’s general manager in Knoxville.
Soldiers Arnold M. Klechka, 71, and Wesley Russell, 76, and Marine Charles B. Fox, 60, were laid to rest in a service attended by about 700 people at West Tennessee Veterans Cemetery in Memphis on Thursday. There was a gun salute, and a bagpiper played “Amazing Grace.”
The process to hold these funerals involves various local, state and national agencies. Sadly, many of these veterans are homeless and relatives that may be out there are unwilling to come forward.
Berry said the process usually begins with county medical examiners or local coroners, who contact state or national veterans’ cemeteries with names of people whose bodies have gone unclaimed. They typically were either homeless or had no surviving relatives to claim them.
And some have had surviving family members who did not want to claim them.
Memorial services are publicized through news outlets, veterans’ groups like the American Legion, or social media. Honor Guard and other active military members attend, but it’s the strangers who come out of respect for the military and the dead who bring dignity to the occasion.
For the funeral of Walker, a local motorcycle group is rallying its members to attend.
A member of Wind Therapy Freedom Riders is also encouraging the public to attend.
“Let’s show our respects to an American Veteran,” said Luis Rodriguez.
The group of bikers will meet at Rudy’s BBQ off I-35 in Round Rock and take off to the burial site at 9 a.m
.
Stories like this that honor America’s veterans, especially at the end of their lives, are a welcome change from the constant stream of 24/7 news. Rest in Peace, Joseph Walker.
May this vet rest in peace.
Funerals without ceremony or anyone at all attending except for honor guard are not isolated incidents.
Many are by choice which is PTSD related. PTSD is a very complicated subject few know about beyond the nightmares which not all PTSD vets have. Many withdraw from family and friends and wind up being very lonely and often homeless as a result.
Mental heath issues such as this, along with the various diseases vets get and the battlefield wounds are reason we should get out of these endless, winless wars that do nothing more than keep the swamps military/industrial complex alive and well.
Related thread...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3723314/posts
I pray this dear Vet gets a wonderful send off.
RIP and thank you for your service.
Fort Hood is there. He will not be alone.
Click the Pic
Rest in Peace
Exactly!
I predict a couple thousand!
Amen
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Damn, I cannot read this - my screen suddenly got all blurry. RIP, soldier.
I ate at that Rudy’s over the holidays. If any of you FReepers go, I highly recommend that as your meet-up spot before and after.
R.I.P.
There are multiple foolish ingrates on this forum who believe PTSD is just a scam.
But it really does destroy lives, mostly as you mentioned.
Withdraw. Isolation. Alcohol and Drugs.
They can’t get along with anybody and don’t want to.
The late Rev. Dr. Jerry Falwell once told a gathering of regional clergy that his church staff would call members of the church to ask them to attend Funerals of members who had no family.
Very thoughtful!
I know, I’ve engaged a couple of them. One claimed to be a multiple tour combat vet that does not have it. PTSD depends on the stressing event and the person affected.
Constantly fearing for your life and seeing up front and close someones brains chasing a bullet as it leaves the skull really isn’t a memory a person wants to reminisce over just before going to sleep.
The vet’s brain is forever rewired, something that just cannot be helped. The self medication with drugs and/or alcohol only worsens it, something else that just cannot be helped.
I had a coworker die at a distant vet hospital last year. No notices in the paper, no funeral. Just buried in a vets grave yard like the subject of this article. So sad. And the man was very proud of his military service.
“Constantly fearing for your life”
Psychopaths have no fear. None.
Ever.
And like Sociopaths they have no human empathy.
They make great war heroes.
Neither gets PTSD because they don’t experience psychological trauma.
Of course then there are the combat vets that were never really under serious threat.
You sound like you are either a counselor or been there done that.
I read Dr Robert Hare’s “Without Conscience” and learned a great deal about psychopaths. And with the understanding I got from that read, yes I can see where a psychopath would not be bothered.
Brutal war would be a paradise for Ted Bundy types. We are watching a Netflix documentary on this guy right now. Just brutally beating to death random young girls is really hard to grasp.
PTSD has been around as long as wars have been fought. During the Great War, The First World War it was called Shell Shock. In some cases men suffered from hysterical blindness, some lost their hair, or their turned white. The mind is wonderful and powerful, and we do not understand our mind’s potential. It is probably greater than we can imagine.
My Grandfather was a WW1 vet. Army combat infantry.
His way of dealing with the experience was to never talk about his time in France. It did affect him.
I’ve participated in a couple of groups to get my mind right.
“... the vet’s brain is forever rewired, something that just cannot be helped. Self medication only worsens it whether it be all or a combination of withdrawal, isolation, alcohol or drugs.”
As an old shipmate says; “no one knows what’s going on in your head”.
Two excellent book on combat trauma are “Achilles in Vietnam” and “Odysseus in America” by Jonathan Shay. Well worth the read if not kept handy for re-reads. Dr. Shea was perhaps the first to advocate treating combat trauma as an injury and not an illness or disorder. In treating combat trauma, Dr. Shea also pioneered the concept of “moral injury” which may be loosely defined as; a betrayal of what is morally correct by someone holding legitimate authority in a critical situation.
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