Corey Pein
New Mexico Department of Veterans Services Secretary John Garcia spoke at the June 3 burial ceremony.
Three days after Memorial Day, politicians, reporters and patriotic bikers gathered at the Santa Fe National Cemetery for the burial of 13 indigent military veterans whose cremated remains had gone unclaimed by family.
“Wouldn’t it have been a shame if these 13, if their remains had just been tossed in the mesa?”
New Mexico
Department of Veterans’ Services Secretary John Garcia said, standing on a stage over the wooden boxes filled with ashes.
[Watch a video of the ceremony
here or below
.]
Contrary to claims made at the ceremony,
New Mexico
’s state government is not a first-of-its kind champion of such forgotten veterans. A
California
-based non-profit group, the
, has gotten government officials to bury hundreds of unclaimed remains around the country since 2007.
And although Garcia told reporters last week he didn’t know why it had taken months or years to discover the ashes%uFFFDsaying, “we just happened to stumble on it”%uFFFDSFR has learned there is more to the story.
MIAP’s
New Mexico
coordinator, Christie Boyer, says she first brought the issue to officials’ attention. And although she praises Garcia’s response, she says the event attracted a certain amount of opportunism. Officials changed the date of the funeral two or three times so that Gov. Bill Richardson could attend, Boyer says. (It was an inconvenience, as she had to arrange for someone else to care for her 86-year-old father, a World War II veteran.)
“It’s political,” Boyer, a Santa Fe County resident and retired Albuquerque police officer, tells
SFR
. “They wanted to take credit for it. Bernalillo County wanted to take all the credit.”
On the other hand, “when it came down to it, John Garcia really stepped to the plate,” Boyer says.
SFR
failed to find many details on the lives of the 13 veterans. As Garcia notes, some were likely homeless and may have suffered from alcoholism or drug addiction.
Asked what his department is doing to ensure that soldiers returning from
Afghanistan
and
Iraq
will not suffer the same fate, Garcia cites “communication and outreach” efforts, and places some responsibility with an earlier generation. “I think the Vietnam vets are trying to make sure this doesn’t happen to them,” Garcia tells
SFR
.
Boyer believes the government could still do more to care for the veterans. “Nobody was taking responsibility for these people,” Boyer says. “And that’s what’s happening all across the nation. It’s not just here. It’s everywhere.”
--
New Mexico Veterans by the Numbers
%uFFFD
Age of the youngest New Mexican to die in
Iraq
or
Afghanistan
:
19
(Army Pfc. Mario A Reyes, Las Cruces)
%uFFFD
Months after taking shrapnel to the brain in
Iraq
that 24-year-old Army Staff Sgt. Daniel Tallouzi died at an Albuquerque hospital:
18
%uFFFD
Minimum number of New Mexicans who have died while serving in
Iraq
or
Afghanistan
:
70
%uFFFD
Approximate number of
Iraq
and
Afghanistan
veterans in
New Mexico
:
30,000
%uFFFD
Number of active-duty US forces now deployed to
Iraq
and
Afghanistan
:
186,000
%uFFFD
Number of private contractors working for the Pentagon in those countries:
207,553
%uFFFD
Share of those contractors who are US citizens:
1 in 5
%uFFFD
Share of Santa Fe County residents who are veterans:
1 in 12
%uFFFD
Number of New Mexicans who receive full Veterans Benefits Administration pensions:
2,690
%uFFFD
Estimated number of homeless veterans in
New Mexico
, according to Garcia:
7,000
%uFFFD
Number of homeless vets provided overnight shelter for at least two weeks last year, according to DVS:
182
%uFFFD
Expected attendance at a DVS-sponsored veterans’ job fair at the Hotel Albuquerque on June 22:
1,500
%uFFFD
Number of employers%uFFFDincluding Avon, Circle K and US Foodservice%uFFFDwho have registered for the job fair so far:
15
%uFFFD
Percentage of attendees who landed jobs at last year’s fair
: 4
%uFFFD
Number of the 13 indigent veterans buried last week who served in the Air Force:
5
(Carleton Crouch, Patrick Faudi, Patrick Ford, Norman W Stiver, Clovis Walker)
%uFFFDin the Army:
4
(William Arthur Bailey, Howard Fried, Lonnie Donald James, John Mercado)
%uFFFDin the Navy:
3
(Lonnie Douglass Gregg, Carl N Peterson, Sr, James D Wroblewski)
%uFFFDin the Marines:
1
(John Thompson)
