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Final Resting Place for 250,000 Vets is a Tin Can on a Shelf
Remains of veterans, some dating back to the Civil War, sit neglected on funeral home shelves around America.
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The task ahead is daunting, to be sure.
There’s not much funding available for a group like the Missing in America Project, which operates on a shoestring budget of $30,000 to $40,000, tied together by donations made $10 and $20 at a time.
Numerous programs exist to help veterans buy homes, find jobs and assimilate back into society after they’ve served in the military, “but nobody wants to address the fact that veterans are dead and forgotten on a shelf,†Saltanti said. “We’re so low on the totem pole, there’s are no government grants or funding.â€
Not only are final resting places of hundreds of thousands of veterans a tin can on a shelf in a funeral home or storage unit, it’s not a story people seem eager to hear, Salanti said.
“Nobody wants to think about it, and that’s the big skeleton in the closet,†he said. “After seven years as an organization, we’re still not in the national consciousness. Nobody wants to discuss how a person ended up alone on a shelf.
"Maybe they were a criminal or forgotten by the family – and we’ve had some that say, 'You bury that s.o.b.' But that wasn’t who he was when he went into the Army and served his country. Maybe it's what happened after he went to war.â€
Remains of veterans, some dating back to the Civil War, sit neglected on funeral home shelves around America.
***
The task ahead is daunting, to be sure.
There’s not much funding available for a group like the Missing in America Project, which operates on a shoestring budget of $30,000 to $40,000, tied together by donations made $10 and $20 at a time.
Numerous programs exist to help veterans buy homes, find jobs and assimilate back into society after they’ve served in the military, “but nobody wants to address the fact that veterans are dead and forgotten on a shelf,†Saltanti said. “We’re so low on the totem pole, there’s are no government grants or funding.â€
Not only are final resting places of hundreds of thousands of veterans a tin can on a shelf in a funeral home or storage unit, it’s not a story people seem eager to hear, Salanti said.
“Nobody wants to think about it, and that’s the big skeleton in the closet,†he said. “After seven years as an organization, we’re still not in the national consciousness. Nobody wants to discuss how a person ended up alone on a shelf.
"Maybe they were a criminal or forgotten by the family – and we’ve had some that say, 'You bury that s.o.b.' But that wasn’t who he was when he went into the Army and served his country. Maybe it's what happened after he went to war.â€
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