Posted on 07/25/2015 6:02:12 PM PDT by pabianice
When headstones on the graves of fallen servicemen crack or fade with age, they're hauled away to be honorably destroyed. Then the Department of Veterans Affairs replaces them.
But at veterans' cemetery in Rhode Island, an employee who was supposed to be taking care of the graves pillaged more than 150 granite headstones, many of them still inscribed with the names of the veterans. Then he took the markers home to build a floor for his carport.
When investigators arrived at Kevin Maynard's house in Charlestown, R.I., this spring, they came upon an eerie scene, according to a federal affadavit: The grave markers, most with the inscriptions face down, were serving as the foundation for two makeshift carports held up by aluminum poles and plastic tarps.
In one carport, Maynard's red, late-model Ford truck was parked on top of the stones. The rest were scattered about the property. On one, the inscription honoring a World War II veteran and his wife were intact: ROMEO J A PELLETIER TEC4 US ARMY WORLD WAR II JUL 5 1919 JUN 21 2011 HIS WIFE GRACE JOYCE OCT 3 1925 JAN 23 1991
Authorities suspect that Maynard had been taking the headstones from a secured area on cemetery grounds since 2009, a few stones at a time.
I’d guess he wasn’t a bitter clinger.
Leni
I’d be a little nervous around Halloween if I were him.
That’s making a strong bet that there is no God. Like a shoving all the chips into the middle kinda bet.
Suit, tie, and shirt ensemble of a gangster.
He borrowed em from the same guy who loans Revrunt Sharpton his wardrobe...
My grandmother’s back steps are tombstones. 100+ years ago her house was a funeral home and the undertaker apparently used the screw ups.
Yeah, no kidding.
No.
Taste.
I sort of expected he might bea more...Pinheaded looking sort of dope...
My dad as well as my wife are buried in a newer state veterans cemetery. The one they are buried in replaced the national one I worked at when it filled up. It's a joint V.A. and State venture. They take excellent care of the graves and give utmost respect for families of the veteran they are burying.
There was a cemetery up by Plattsburgh NY Air Force Base where they bulldozed all the headstones into the river. Apparently the priest and the city got into a snit and the city didn’t want to maintain the cemetery so it was bulldozed. Air Force volunteers used to try to retrieve the headstones for relatives.
I once worked in V.A. student work study program at a National Cemetery. When a marker was replaced we busted the old one with a sledge hammer and it went in the dumpster.
...
According to the article these headstones were on their way to be crushed.
That said the federal government dug up tens of thousands of graves in this area and moved them elsewhere. But they are marked graves.
In the case of the article the headstones are government property. The man took home government property. But he did not remove headstones where the grave would be left unmarked. The stones were to be destroyed because due to wear etc the V.A. had replaced them. How dignified can a person do it and I'm not being sarcastic. It will have to go somewhere and it should be busted up enough not to be identifiable to whom it identified as such.
OK a policy change occurred. I worked at one in the early 1980's.
He doesn’t look like someone you’d want to babysit the kids.
Wouldn’t that be desecrating a grave site?Sounds like a serious crime to me.
or the DOGS!!
This happended quite a bit with Yankee headstones in the South after the Civil War. My brother reworked an old walkway a few years ago. When he pulled up the mable stones, guess what he found...
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