Missing in America making sure veterans have military funerals

Non-profit identifies, buries veterans' remains

By Judy Keen, USA TODAY
HIGGINSVILLE, Mo. — Gervis and Mary Adney were finally laid to rest in the Missouri Veterans Cemetery on a cloudless morning. A bagpiper played Amazing Grace, a bugler played taps and a three-shot volley echoed across the hills.

Since Mary Adney's death in 1992 and her husband's in 1989, their cremated remains had been in a funeral home's storage facility, unclaimed. He had served in the Army in World War I. The Missing in America Project, a national non-profit organization that locates, identifies and inters veterans' cremains, researched the dates of her birth and death and helped ensure that both received belated military burials.

In all, 16 veterans and two spouses, including Mary and Gervis, were honored in a single ceremony and interred here. Their cremains had all been in storage, sometimes for decades. A Missouri law proposed by the Missing in America Project and passed last year made it possible for them to be laid to rest. The law eliminated liability for funeral homes that turn over veterans' ashes that have been abandoned for at least a year to veterans' service groups.

"They are home now," said Higginsville cemetery director Jess Rasmussen at the brief service, which was not attended by relatives of any of the 18 deceased. "They're not forgotten anymore on a dusty shelf."
read more here
Non profit identifies buries veterans remains