DENVER (KDVR) There’s a rule in the military: no man left behind.
For Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 1071, that rule extends far beyond the battlefield.
“A lot of work goes into this and it’s rewarding,” said Stan Paprocki, chapter president, at a memorial service held Wednesday at Fort Logan National Cemetery. It was a service decades in the making. The cremated remains of 11 Colorado veterans who’d been forgotten and abandoned were finally laid to rest.
“Today we had three World War II veterans, three Korean War veterans and four Vietnam veterans,” said Bill Bridges, director of the chapter’s Honors Burial Program.
With no family or friends to claim their cremated remains when they died, their urns have gathered dust on the shelf of a local funeral home for decades.
“Several reasons that I’ve run across is that families can’t decide what to do with their loved one (at their time of death),” Bridges said.
Among those inurned Wednesday, Ben Burton Balsley, an Air Force veteran who died in 2013 at the age of 81. No one ever claimed his remains. And Gary Wayne Weikert of Eaton, who died in 1984 at just 48 years old. He was survived by his wife and children, but for some reason, his remains stayed behind at the funeral home.
The Vietnam Veterans of America chapter has been working with Colorado mortuaries for nine years, helping research unclaimed remains, identify which of them were veterans, and arrange for a proper military service for those who served their country.
“That brings us to a total of 158 veterans that we’ve been able to find that were left in funeral homes up and down the front range,” Bridges said.
Last year, FOX31 went behind the scenes with the Vietnam Veterans of America to document the process of identifying veterans whose remains had been abandoned at local funeral homes. You can watch our special report here.
