What's trashed at Arlington National Cemetery

[babylonsister]

What's trashed at Arlington National Cemetery

Many personal mementos of dead soldiers are being thrown out -- a stark contrast to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Editor's note: This is the second article in a special Salon investigation of America's renowned cemetery.

By Mark Benjamin


Photo by Christopher M. Matthews

View a slide show of personal mementos thrown out at Arlington National Cemetery and those preserved at the Vietnam "wall."


July 17, 2009 | A few days after Memorial Day, I walked across the sprawling, plush lawn of Arlington National Cemetery. I headed toward Section 60, a remote area of the famous burial ground, where 600 service members from Iraq and Afghanistan are laid to rest. Gina Gray, former public affairs officer at the cemetery, had testified that mismanagement at Arlington had resulted in callous treatment of personal mementos and artifacts left on grave sites in Section 60. The sun was out after several days of rain. As I approached the gravestones, I saw that Gray was right.

Left out in the rain to rot were crayon drawings by children who had lost a parent, photographs of soldiers with their babies, painted portraits and thank-you notes from grade-school kids to fallen soldiers they had never known. Colors of artworks ran together. Photos were blurred and wilted. Poems and letters were illegible wads of wet paper. A worker in a brown uniform wandered among the graves, blasting the headstones with a power washer without regard to what was left of the mementos -- or the obviously uncomfortable mourners looking on. Some items got further soaked. The worker blasted others across the grass. Many of them would end up in a black trash bin in the cemetery's service area.

Arlington's poor treatment of the mementos and gifts -- testaments to the personal cost of the post-9/11 wars in the Middle East -- appeared to stand in contrast to practices at other cemeteries. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which runs 130 cemeteries across the country, asks people not to leave items other than flowers on the graves. But when it does find those items, it collects and holds them for 30 days in case the family wants to claim them. Across the Potomac, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial maintains a much stricter policy. It collects virtually everything, down to the last cigarette, left at "the wall." Every item is then recorded and placed in a climate-controlled warehouse, often visited by historians and researchers.

The parents I met in Section 60 were stunned to hear that grave-site artifacts often end up in the trash. Karen Meredith's son, Lt. Ken Ballard, was killed in Iraq in 2004. She and her family regularly lavish Ballard's Arlington grave with flowers, potted plants, flags and other mementos. "Our goal was to have the most decorated grave," she said. She told me about her Section 60 acquaintances who leave silk roses on Valentine's Day and Peeps on Easter. On Mardi Gras, another family decorates headstones with beads. This Memorial Day, Meredith and another family whose son was killed in Iraq raised a glass of champagne to Ken. "Ken would have loved that," she said. "That is a way to celebrate his life." They left the champagne glass behind.

I later showed Meredith a photograph of Ballard's grave after the rains, heaped with dead flowers and crumpled flags. She was distraught. "It looks like they used Ken's grave as a repository of crap," she said. "It makes me sad. People leave things that are really meaningful." Jean Feggins, whose son, Albert Markee Nelson, was killed in Iraq in 2006, had a similar response when I told her I had seen mementos from Section 60 being hosed off grave sites and piled into trash heaps. "They are throwing out people's photos and letters?" she exclaimed. "That is very insensitive. I'll bet people would not leave that stuff if they knew. They really should archive those treasures -- and that really is what they are to the families that leave them."

more...

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/07/17/arlington_gravesites/

[SoCalDem]

1. Arlington has been there a very long time.

Can you imagine the size of warehouse that would be needed to save, catalogue and atore the mementos left there over all the years?

The Wall is different, because everyone there (mostly) died young, and in a single "war". They left parents & young families behind, but at Arlington, since the Civil war, the burials are proabably singular ones, and most of the people buried there probably have few if any people living, who actually knew the sound of their voice.

[mikelgb]

2. how about the size of the dump where they all went instead?

[babylonsister]

4. Sorry, but it's indefensible, at least to me. What makes

the death of a soldier from Iraq/Afghanistan any less important that one from VN?

The whole situation is. I hope you read this whole series about Arlington. The first part was posted yesterday.

Grave offenses at Arlington National Cemetery

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/07/16/arlington_national_cemetery/

[SoCalDem]

5. yes, I read it. and it's sad

but leaving things at a grave may not be the thing to do, since no one is there to protect it (if it's something of value).

[arcadian]

3. where 600 service members from Iraq and Afghanistan are laid to rest

They should call that the George W. Bush section of Arlington. I've been to Section 60, it's busy all the time, still busy.

[MineralMan]

6. The same thing applies at all National Cemeteries.

Stuff that's left at gravesites is tossed after a time. If it were not, the places would look like garbage dumps after a very short period. Instead, when you visit, not long after a national holiday like Veterans Day, you find a clean, well-groomed cemetery, without piles of dead flowers, kids' pictures smeared by the necessary watering that keeps the grass growing, and miscellaneous stuff that has meaning only to those mourners who visit.

There's no place to store such items, and they wouldn't be viewed again in any case. Instead, families return with new mementos and find a clean place that shows respect to the dead.

My father-in-law is interred in the National Cemetery here in the Twin Cities. My wife and I and his widow visit the gravesite several times a year. Each time, we are impressed with the grounds care and the respect shown to all these veterans. Each time, there are fresh displays at various markers, and I usually walk around and look at some of them to see if I can scope out some personal meaning in the items left at the markers. The next time we visit, the items are fresh. You almost never see dead flowers or what ends up being trash there. That would be a pity if stuff was just allowed to rot.