Kevin Stine: A nation honors its veterans

     “To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan.”
          Abraham Lincoln. These words became the motto of the U.S. Veterans Administration

     "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
          William Faulkner, 1951

Wars have a long, long tail.

I wrote yesterday about the orderly rows of headstones at the Eagle Point National Cemetery. 

The order is a sign of respect. 

People in military service submit to military discipline. They are commanded to do hard, dangerous things. There is a code of honor and duty. There is a process, the military way. That extends to the way a military funeral is performed. Kevin Stine is on a team that performs them.

Stine is a veteran of the U.S. Navy, having served for nine years, with tours of duty aboard submarines. He is now in the U.S. Navy Reserves. He is a graduate of Southern Oregon University. He teaches in Medford schools. He has been on the Medford, Oregon, city council for 11 years, including two years as council president. He is a Democratic candidate for State Senate in District 3. He wrote me yesterday with a comment to the guest post on cemeteries. 

A military funeral is a debt owed a veteran by the United States of America. Life is transitory, but patriotic service leaves a permanent mark. The headstone endures. The flag endures. The precision of the funeral endures. 

Guest Post by Kevin Stine

I am on the Navy Funeral Honors Team and have conducted around 700 services in honor of Navy veterans that have passed. Most lived nice, long lives, while others had the misfortune of the things that occur in life such as diseases and traffic-related accidents. The great majority of services are at Eagle Point National Cemetery as I am about a 20 minute drive away. Roseburg has a national cemetery as well, and I have completed a significant number there.

Services will happen wherever a family chooses to have the funeral honors performed. I have been to many churches and done gravesite services. I have been in backyards and to family plots. The honors itself does not change whether it be an E-1 or an O-10. We have a ceremonial playing of Taps, followed by a flag fold that is presented to the next of kin. The three-volley salute may be performed if the family or funeral home requests one, and an organization is available. Those are performed by the Veterans organizations such as the Marine Corps League, Vietnam Veterans of America, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW).

I will often walk around cemeteries and see the names and dates of headstones. Military cemeteries are uniform and don't allow much information other than name, dates of life, religious affiliation, branch of service, war zone, and simple identifying information such as being a husband/wife or father/mother. Spouses can be buried there as well. Sometimes you see one person's beginning and end date, then another with a beginning with no end, as they are widowed. My grandmother lived 25 years as a widow before passing away last year. She is now placed and headstone date is added to her husband, my grandfather.

For private cemeteries, you can see much more of the story. A picture of the person. The person's favorite sports team or activity. Items are left by family members that have come to visit. I see the dates and can imagine the world that they saw. People that grew up during the Civil War, and lived through WW1. Those that lived during the Great Depression and into the Nixon years.

Their specific stories are largely lost through history. For example, it is unlikely that you know your great-great grandparents names, let alone anything about them.

As I get older, there are more and more numbers in my phone that once belonged to a friend or acquaintance. I get Facebook notifications of it being someone's birthday, that has died some years ago. I'll read obituaries and think a bit more about life, from those that have lived theirs. With the exception of self-harm, we don't get to choose our end, or generally the health we have before it comes that time.

Cemeteries provide a final spot for our remains, and at 40 years old I haven't thought too much of where I'll go. It would be nice to have a picture, and a biography to read, for those that take a future stroll for whatever final spot on this Earth that I take.

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