Waging a Final Battle for Forgotten Vets

The cremains of those who served in the armed forces sit languishing on the shelves of funeral homes, a sad scandal as we mark Veterans Day this month. But an unlikely army of supporters — bikers — are determined to identify the departed and give them a dignified send-off

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Photograph by David Lewinski

Jim “Bingo” O’Donnell, foreground, and Larry Root are part of the Missing in America Project (MIAP), a volunteer group whose goal is to identify and put to rest the cremains of forgotten vets.

“We don’t blame the funeral homes,” Root says. “At this point, Michigan just doesn’t have any good laws governing this problem, but we’re hoping to fix that. We are all going to have to work together — funeral directors, families, different veterans organizations — if we want to see this project through.”

Curiously, Root, O’Donnell, and Price — the three prime movers of this state’s MIAP effort — aren’t veterans. However, each had a father who served in uniform, a distinction that qualifies them for membership in the Sons of the American Legion. The auxiliary is an offshoot of the American Legion, whose own membership is restricted to wartime-era veterans.

Price, a product of Detroit’s west side, remembers as a boy wondering about a neighbor “who used to go around like he was walking on spurs.” Price’s father, a Navy veteran of World War II, explained that the man had been tortured as a prisoner of war, his Japanese captors cutting the bottom of his feet.

“Guys like that just don’t get the respect they deserve,” Price says. “I remember lots of nights when my dad would wake up in a cold sweat. He’d suffered shell shock in the Pacific, and years later he was still fighting the war. I think maybe that’s why I’m involved. My dad was always proud of being a vet. I like to think he’s looking down and smiling at me, saying, ‘Good job, son.’ ”

Most MIAP volunteers are motorcycle enthusiasts, underscoring the symbiotic relationship that has long existed between veterans and bikers. “Most bikers are pretty patriotic; I’m not really sure why that is,” says O’Donnell, who grew up in Detroit’s scrappy Brightmoor neighborhood and rode with the Blue Angels, Scorpions, and other gangs of the ’70s. “I think a lot of the guys who came back from Vietnam, the only place they could really fit in was with bikers.”

The American Legion Riders, today an authorized motorcycle auxiliary of the American Legion, was formed in 1993 by “Polka Bill” Kaledas and Chuck “Tramp” Dare, a pair of free spirits who belonged to Post No. 396 in Garden City. To the relief of many older non-riding veterans, whose only acquaintance with the biker lifestyle was news stories of Hell’s Angels and vague recollections of outlaw biker Marlon Brando in The Wild One, the American Legion Riders turned out not to be a motorcycle club in the traditional anti-establishment sense, but rather a family-oriented program whose charity runs support a variety of American Legion causes. It’s currently active in more than 30 states and has added hundreds of thousands of new names to the American Legion’s membership ranks of nearly 3 million.

The American Legion Riders begat the Patriot Guard Riders, an organization that first captured national attention in 2005 when members of a Kansas post began escorting and shielding mourners from anti-war protesters at the funerals of fallen servicemen and women. Soon there were chapters in many states, including Michigan. “We never show up unless we’re invited, and 95 percent of the families want us there,” says Price, who, like Root and O’Donnell, belongs to both motorcycle auxiliaries.

The sight of scores of leather-clad bikers holding giant American flags at a funeral or memorial service to block out protesters is impressive and even intimidating at times, but the Patriot Guard is respectful, not confrontational, says Price. “If you ask the vets in the group, they’ll say, ‘Let ’em protest. We fought to give them that right — whether we agree with them or not.’ ” If the protesters get too loud and obnoxious, the bikers sing patriotic songs or rev their engines, drowning out the chants and insults. Root, who rides a 2005 Harley Ultra Touring Bike complete with satellite radio and GPS, recalls a recent “mission” to Sturgis, Mich., where eight protesters tried to disrupt the funeral of a soldier who had died in Iraq. “We had 300 escort riders. The family didn’t even know the protesters were there. Our flag line kind of made them invisible.”

In September, a bill was introduced by State Rep. Martin Griffin, D-Jackson, aimed at greatly easing MIAP’s herculean task. The legislation allows a funeral director to notify the family of the deceased of any veteran status. If the cremains are not claimed within six months, a letter is then sent to the family. If no response has been received after 30 days, the director is free to release personal information to the Veterans Administration or a veterans organization, such as the MIAP, which would then secure the deceased’s discharge papers and arrange for a suitable military burial at a national cemetery. The bill, which was amended to include a veteran’s dependents (spouse and children under 21), passed the House and now awaits approval from the Senate. “I’m looking to make the Michigan law the model for all the states,” Salanti says. “It’s the first one to have teeth.”

A federal statute also is in the works. According to Salanti, U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., is drafting legislation that she hopes to get before Congress sometime in 2009. Recognizing the reality that funeral directors have little incentive beyond “doing the right thing” in expending time and effort in cooperating with MIAP, the proposed statute would allow funeral homes to have certain costs reimbursed by the Veterans Administration.

And what of the abandoned cremains of all those who didn’t serve in uniform? “It tears me up to shut the door on the non-vets,” Salanti says. “However, our general plan is that after we’ve worked with a funeral home to get the veterans identified and properly interred, we can arrange to have all the others placed in a single casket for a mass burial. It would be dignified. And we can clean the shelves.”

So far, MIAP volunteers have visited nearly 600 funeral homes across the country. They’ve catalogued 6,327 sets of cremains, of which 491 have been determined to be veterans — some from such distant conflicts as the Spanish-American War and World War I. So far, 312 have been interred at national cemeteries. Sometimes the only attendees at the funeral are the members of the Patriot Guard Riders, who escorted the veteran to his grave. “We just buried a Vietnam vet in Redding, Calif., with no family,” Salanti says. “It was us or nobody. There wasn’t a biker there without a tear on his cheek.”

Salanti says the Missing in America Project is a long-term, but not time-sensitive, undertaking — a good thing, since there is a shortage of volunteers and upward of 45,000 funeral homes around the country to canvass. So far, O’Donnell has visited about 60 of them. “Taylor, Westland, Inkster, Port Huron, Canton, Farmington Hills — and I haven’t even started on the ones in Detroit yet,” he says. “I just know those older Detroit funeral homes are going to have thousands of cremains.”

In the parking lot of a funeral home in Dearborn, where O’Donnell and Price have just dropped off some MIAP literature, the two advocates chat for a few minutes. It’s a mild, sun-splashed afternoon — perfect riding weather. The talk turns to suicide clutches and old biker hangouts and days gone by, back when Bingo’s and Grinner’s tanks were sloshing with testosterone. “You don’t hear too much about gun battles anymore,” Price says. O’Donnell recalls working as a bouncer at a Detroit bar. Once a bomb blew up the restroom just moments after he’d used it. Both laugh. Good times.

The old defiance briefly flares when the conversation strays to riding in Canada, where the law prohibits the flying of foreign flags on all vehicles. “That’s why I quit crossing that bridge into Windsor,” O’Donnell says. He points to the miniature Old Glory fluttering atop the trunk of his Harley. “No way am I taking that flag down.”

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