boots on the ground
Story by Carisa Cegavske. Photo by Michael Sullivan. The News- Review. Reprinted with permission.
Forgotten No Longer Why the Cremated Remains of 28 World War I and II Veterans were Forgotten for Decades, and How Their Memories Were Rescued and Finally Laid to Rest Army National Guardsmen carry the cremated remains of U.S. military veterans to the Douglas County Courthouse for a ceremony in April.
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n 1975, two World War I veterans, James Miller and Adam Heussner, died in Douglas County. Both had been born before 1900. Both were cremated, and then their ashes were set on a shelf at Wilson’s Chapel of the Roses waiting for relatives to claim them. They never did. Forty-four years later, their ashes were still on the shelf. Forgotten. In April, they were finally claimed by members of the Douglas County Veterans Forum and brought to the Douglas County Courthouse to be placed in the care of Douglas County Veteran Service Office Director Mary Newman-Keyes.They joined the remains of 26 other veterans left on the shelf at Wilson’s. Most had died in the 1970s and 1980s. They included two more who served in World War I and 17 who served in World War II, along with others serving in later conflicts. All 28 will be interred next month at the Roseburg National Cemetery in May with full military honors. It is one of the largest groups of unclaimed veterans remains ever to have been recovered in this state. Some were found in an attic room, others in the crypt at the cemetery operated by Wilson’s. They might have remained unclaimed forever if it hadn’t been for the efforts of Forum member Carol Hunt. About three years ago, Hunt heard about veterans’ cremated remains that had been found at the Oregon State Hospital in Salem. The state hospital remains had been rescued and interred at the Willamette National Cemetery. So she and Gigi Grimes, the former cemetery technician for the Roseburg National Cemetery, began asking around at local funeral homes to see if any remains were left unclaimed here. Hunt said Gene Goodson, manager of Wilson’s, told them they were welcome to research his files to see if there were veterans’ 30
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remains there. Hunt said she and Grimes walked up creaky old stairs to the attic in the Wilson’s building on Harvard Avenue and started their search. After a long search, they came up with 17 veterans. Eventually, Wilson’s found additional remains and the list expanded to 44. Then, the Oregon Department of Veterans’ Affairs helped verify that the veterans who had been found were eligible to find their final rest at the Roseburg National Cemetery. A few weren’t eligible. Others turned out to have been previously claimed by relatives. One was discovered to have been split, with some of the ashes already buried at Willamette. In the end, the final number of remains the Veterans Forum claimed on Friday was 28. For Hunt, whose grandfather served in World War I and father served in World War II and the Korean War, the project was an emotional one. “It just ripped my heart,” she said. “It makes me very happy that it’s coming to a close, and that they’re going to receive their honors, but it breaks my heart that it took so long to get this done when it was so easy for Chapel of the Roses to walk across the street and have them interred.” Goodson, a retired Vietnam-era Air Force veteran who worked primarily in food service, has been the Wilson’s manager for 10 years. All the remains rescued Friday had been on the shelf there for at least a decade before he arrived. He believes the remains were kept in hopes that families would eventually pick them up, and he said it’s not the funeral home’s fault that the remains were left so long. “It’s really the families’ responsibility to come and claim them and take care of them,” he said.
