In Their Honor

Doug Farish, a volunteer member of the Honor Guard, salutes one of the veterans being laid to rest. The Honor Guard is at the cemetary almost every day. They have served in up to eight funerals in one day.

Crystal L. Lauderdale/Tampa Tribune

By GRETCHEN PARKER The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 25, 2007

BUSHNELL - The saddest funerals are the ones no one comes to.

The honor guard waits, holding its rifles with white-gloved hands. The volunteers adjust their shiny helmets. The chaplain, an old World War II gunner, touches the laminated prayers in his pocket.

The hearse rolls up, the remains of a U.S. veteran inside. No one is behind it.

The full service plays out. The flag is folded into a sharp triangle, with three symbolic rifle shells tucked inside. Prayers. A salute of gunfire in three rounds. Taps.

The funeral director steps back into the hearse.

He and the veterans of the honor guard were the only stewards to walk this soul into his final resting place.

It’s a scene described by members of the guard who have seen it many times. Usually, they have company. Usually, there are at least a handful of people to witness the military honors offered to all those who left the service on good terms.

It’s a heavy job, conducting 500 funerals a year. Sometimes the Sumter County Volunteer Honor Guard lays to rest as many as eight veterans a day. There are so many funerals at Florida National Cemetery that sometimes you can hear gunfire from another service on the other side of the trees.

The guards don’t have long to reflect on what it means to welcome a fellow American veteran into this quiet field of white marble.

In a half-hour, another veteran needs a funeral.

“It gets pretty depressing sometimes, yes it does,” said Howard May, a former Army infantryman, farmer, guitar salesman and antiques shop owner who is a rifleman for the Sumter County honor guard. “When you see it time after time, several times a day.”

Florida National Cemetery, an hour’s drive north of Tampa, has the most funerals and memorial services of any national cemetery in the country, cemetery officials said.

There are six sheltered areas, with podiums and pews, where services are conducted. Each is shaded by its own pocket of the Withlacoochee State Forest; none are within eyesight of each other.

The separation allows for the maximum amount of ceremonies — six at once, every half-hour.

Wintertime is busiest, but on average the cemetery lays to rest 27 veterans a day, Monday through Friday. That adds up to just short of 7,000 burials and inurnments a year — mostly veterans of World War II, Korea or Vietnam.

It’s a busy place. The slow stream of cars and hearses flowing in and out is nearly constant.

At first, it can be overwhelming, several members of the Sumter County guard said. It’s not the bodies or the idea that someone has died. Guards never see the body, only the refined beauty of a casket or urn. They try not to let it sink in — what’s inside.

It’s the raw emotion of family members that can be unsettling, May said. Sometimes their cries are hard to ignore.

The sound of taps washing over the mourners often unleashes a wave of grief.

“You try to be understanding and try not to make them feel worse by crying yourself. You have to keep yourself kind of at a distance when that happens,” said Evelyn Vilet, 83, who worked on electrical instruments in Navy planes during World War II.

She helped found the Sumter County guard 15 years ago, when word spread that the cemetery, then four years old, didn’t have enough honor guards to perform all the services that were needed. Her job is to greet the family, help fold the flag and pray.

Vilet estimates she has helped conduct 5,000 military services here.

Only for those killed in active duty does the federal government send a full honor guard. Two active service members are dispatched for the service if the family requests them, but most of the work of giving military honors falls to volunteer honor guards made up of veterans who live within a short driving distance of Bushnell. They’re not paid.

About a dozen are very active here. The Sumter County Volunteer Honor Guard is one of the most active, said cemetery representative Bobby Hodges.

Every night, bugler Garfield Jones checks his answering machine for calls from funeral homes. It’s the only notice the guard gets of the line-up for the next day’s services.

Work Of The Guard

Home base is VFW Post 10137, two miles from the cemetery.

Guard members start their day here, as early as 8 a.m. The riflemen retrieve their old M1s from a locked cabinet and go over the day’s schedule. Joe Straub, a survivor of the Battle of the Bulge, writes each service in pencil in a notebook his wife decorated with stickers of roses and U.S. flags.

The pages of this book, just four years old , are filled with lines of dates and times.

The guards are already dressed in white-collared shirts pinned with the tiny hallmarks of their military service. Chaplain Walt Miller has patches to show that he flew for the Army Air Forces.

After that, for something different, he joined the Marines.

Doug Farish has the insignia of a Navy man who then joined the Air Force, where he served 16 years.

Over their shoulders, they wear black braided funeral cords.

The mood is light. They tease one another like old friends, and they’ve adopted the edgy sense of humor of people who deal with death often. Vilet says it’s a way of coping with what can be a grim pastime.

And although they joke about the military (“Doug was in the Navy. He sat on the deck of a ship eating steak!”), they never joke about the funerals.

They take it very seriously.

“We buried a man today who was on a destroyer during the invasion of Guadalcanal,” Vilet said last week at the end of a two-funeral day. “That means a lot, to tell a family that we, strangers, appreciate what he did and that he helped preserve freedom in the United States.”

Although the families appreciate the services, and many offer donations to the guard, the work is — above all — for the veterans, guard members said. In the end, veterans are comrades, and they have earned the right to a final, sacred salute.

They think a lot about their own futures and worry some about outliving the rest of the honor guard. Who will be around, they ask, to commemorate them and their service?

Several have their own spots reserved at the Bushnell cemetery. Jones’ wife already is there. So is Vilet’s husband.

They trust that someone will step up and give them the honors they have performed so many times.

The number of military funerals is going up. Last year, there were 157,427 services with military honors for active and nonactive vets, the Department of Defense says. That’s 27,000 more than the year before.

The Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that every day, 1,900 vets die. In Florida, it’s about 60,000 a year.

Most of the services for those veterans will fall to volunteer honor guards.

“You’ve always got a certain amount of people that will carry the ball. It’s not a majority. It’s a minority,” said May, who at 64 is the second-youngest member of this guard.

A Hero’s Due

May joined four years ago, intending to help out once or twice a week. He couldn’t stop coming, though, when he realized how many veterans were dying and how many services need honor guards.

He changed his way of thinking about the funerals, so they wouldn’t be so depressing. The way he looks at it now, he thinks of the vets as heroes and that he’s helping do a good deed for them.

“You just go on with the part that you have to do,” May said.

May’s part is to help render the salute of gunfire. There are as many as seven riflemen, depending on who’s available. The honor guard has 13 members; ideally, 11 are needed for a service, but they can make do with fewer.

They all have stories. May remembers being the lone rifleman at a funeral three years ago, the day after Hurricane Jeanne. He fired three volleys, the same as if his friends were beside him.

He remembers the day a few years ago when Chuck White, who calls the commands to the riflemen, was having chest pains for hours. At the end of the day, he went to the doctor, then to the hospital.

“He had a bypass,” May said.

Several recall one of the guard’s first funerals, when the bottom of the government casket fell out. Everything was bundled up into the back of the hearse and returned to the funeral home.

And they all have seen the lonely funerals — the ones with no mourners. But there are many more services that draw lines and lines of cars, 30 or 40. Piles of family and friends gather to hear Vilet and Miller explain the meaning of the stars and stripes and recite prayers.

The guards scramble back to the VFW for sloppy Joes or a hamburger during a break. At the end of the day, some of the men return for a beer. Overhead, ceiling fans flirt with the cigarette smoke.

The guards sit at the bar, decorated with plastic flag banners for Memorial Day.

Whether they’ve done one service or eight, they’re drained.

Reporter Gretchen Parker can be reached at gparker@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7562.

MILITARY FUNERAL HONORS

There are a minimum of two armed services members, one of whom is a member of the deceased veteran’s branch of service

The U.S. flag is folded and presented to the veteran’s family.

Up to seven riflemen fire a three-volley salute with blank ammunition.

A burial flag is furnished to honor the memory of the veteran’s military service.

Taps is played either by a bugler or an electronic recording. Often it is the recording because there are so few buglers available.

Sources: Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Defense; Research by CATHERINE HAMMER

TO GET INVOLVED

For information about joining volunteer honor guards that serve Florida National Cemetery:

Sumter County Volunteer Honor Guard, Garfield Jones, (352) 568-0090

Marine Corps League 708 of Spring Hill, (352) 597-7979

VFW Post 8083 of Belleview, (352) 245-8083Ö , or Dick Dushane, (352) 259-7003

FLAG-FOLDING RITUAL

The Sumter County Volunteer Honor Guard chaplain recites the following while folding the veteran’s flag:

This flag of the United States of America now being folded is a living memorial to the courageous thoughts of our comrade, the one you came here to honor today.

The blue field represents the sky that overlooks our land and denotes the watchfulness of God, our Heavenly Father.

The red stripes tell us of the blood, sweat and tears that were offered by our comrade’s devotion to the freedom of his (her) country. The white stripes boldly proclaim the peace that he (she) helped to bring to our future generations.

This is his (her) flag! The flag that he (she) loved and served so well.