THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 4, 1996 TAG: 9608020207
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JANIE BRYANT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 53 lines
Cephas Wright was at a funeral at Lincoln Memorial Cemetery when he first noticed veterans' markers stacked up around a utility shed.
He decided to find out why. When a veteran dies, the Veterans Administration sends the next of kin a marble headstone, he said.
The stones are inscribed with the deceased veteran's name, date of birth and death, rank and branch of service. But about 19 of those markers had not been claimed or installed at the graves of veterans buried at the cemetery.
Wright said he was told that there is a $75 charge to install the stones at graves. In some cases, the veterans had no surviving family to pay the installment fee. In other cases, family members lived out of town or for other reasons were unaware they needed to pay a fee to have the markers installed.
One stone for a World War I veteran had been sitting there for almost 25 years.
Wright remembers looking through those stones and even recognizing a couple of past members of the Sgt. William H. Harrison American Legion Post 190.
Wright is president of the Past Commanders Inc., an auxiliary organization of past commanders within the post.
One was James Mallory, who died in 1987. He was a Portsmouth band teacher and served as the American Legion post historian for several years.
Wright and Mallory had grown up together, been in the same Boy Scout troop and served in the military during the Korean War.
There were plenty of veterans he didn't know. A steward first class in the Navy who was born in 1893 and who died in 1978. A man who served as a corporal during World War I, who died in 1972.
Many served their country in the second World War, others in Vietnam.
Seeing markers for veterans like that bothered him.
``These people have served their country honorably - most of them in a period of war,'' he said.
He brought up the problem to other members of the post and the members voted to take installation of the markers on as a project.
But Wright credits retired Army Sgt. 1st Class Alfred Oakes, the post's service officer, with getting the project under way.
The money for the project comes out of the organization's general fund and the cemetery owner is giving the organization a discount on the installation fees.
Oakes, who served 23 years in the Army, said he thought the project was a good one for the organization.
``This is what the American Legion is all about - doing for veterans and for widows and for children of veterans,'' said Calvin Smith, post commander. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by MARK MITCHELL
Calvin Smith, left, and Albert Oakes find the marker of a former
member of American Legion Post 190. by CNB