The following excerpt is from an article in the May 28, 2012 edition of the Wichita Eagle about the veteran’s cemeteries scattered nation-wide, and their expansion. It’s a good memorial-day read.
Those who knew Jim Dodson recall an auto mechanic and avid bowler, not so much a soldier.
But when the Korean War veteran died in April at age 79, his family learned about benefits of his military service that he never mentioned:
Dodson could be buried for free in a tranquil cemetery less than an hour east of Kansas City, alongside other veterans and their spouses.
For nine years, daughter Vanessa Oyler had kept the ashes of Dodson’s longtime wife, Brenda, in a wooden box. It turned out that the Missouri Veterans Cemetery in Higginsville would accept Brenda’s remains, too.
“They’ll be together where they should’ve been all along,” said Oyler of Independence. “And we’ll have a little place to go visit them.”
With 600,000 veterans dying annually — more these days from the Korean and Vietnam eras, combined, than from the World War II generation — federal and state governments are making space available as never before.
