Comforting Hand Volunteers Offer Support To Families Of Veterans Being Buried At Arlington Cemetery

Cissie Chrisco stands erect, hand over her heart, as the Army band plays a final tribute to a World War II veteran. Dust from the newly dug grave covers her low-heel shoes as she walks toward the family of a man she has never met and delivers her heart-felt condolences.

Chrisco is one of about 150 volunteers - wives and widows of servicemen - who attend almost every military funeral at Arlington National Cemetery, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C.

The military cemetery is one of the most beautiful and most popular tourist attractions in the area, with row upon row of white grave markers, some gleaming new, others tinged with age, stretching across the rolling hills of Virginia.

Regardless of the weather, these women are on hand to extend their sympathies to the servicemen’s families on behalf of the chief of staff of the appropriate branch of the armed services and, on occasion, to serve as the only attendant at the funeral aside from the chaplain and official burial party. The women volunteer to show respect and appreciation for the sacrifices of the lost servicemen.

“I hate the term ‘mourner,”’ said Nancy Schado, chairman of the Army Arlington Ladies. “It sounds so terrible.

“We are there to give help to the family and honor the person in the casket who has done so much for the country and for us.”

“We never call it a duty,” Schado said. “It’s an honor and privilege to be there.”

The first Arlington Ladies were organized in 1948. The bodies of many U.S. servicemen were still being returned after World War II for reburial at Arlington, and often the families from around the county couldn’t afford the trip to attend the service.

The Air Force chief of staff at the time, Gen. Hoyt Vandenburg, “felt there needed to be someone there, particularly for the widows, to represent the Air Force family,” explained Suellen Lansell, chairman of the Air Force Arlington Ladies.

Originally the service was carried out by Vandenburg’s wife, Gladys Vandenburg, and a group of her friends. Over the years, it has expanded into a more formal service committee, sanctioned by the chiefs of staff and operating in conjunction with the chaplain’s office.

The Army established its own corps of Arlington Ladies in 1972 and the Navy in 1985. The Marines do not incorporate the Arlington Ladies into their funerals.

Schado, a three-time Army widow, has been guiding her band of about 60 volunteers since she took over as chairman of the Army’s group in 1980, reviewing the list of scheduled funerals each afternoon to ensure that enough ladies are assigned to cover each the next day and to find substitutes when necessary.

With so many World War II veterans now in their 70s and 80s, Schado said, there are usually eight to 10 Army funerals a day and sometimes as many as 14.

Each Arlington Lady writes a personal note to the deceased’s family, extending her personal sympathies and the condolences of the service’s chief of staff and his wife. The ladies offer their help and include their telephone numbers.

Sometimes the families accept the offers of assistance. For instance, there was the mother who called Schado and asked her to check to see if the Ranger emblem was etched on the back of her son’s marker. Schado took a photo of the grave stone and sent it, along with a handwritten note, to the mother.

Chrisco said one Army widow contacted her after she had attended her husband’s funeral and asked her to accompany her to the Columbarium - the memorial where servicemen and women’s ashes are interred - to celebrate what would have been their 50th wedding anniversary.

Chrisco, who joined the Army Arlington Ladies in 1977, said she did it initially because “I wanted to help lonely people.”

Over the years, Chrisco said, she has also learned to wear low-heel shoes.

“In the 70s, we used to wear those spike heels, and these poor guys (referring to the military escorts who accompany each of the Arlington Ladies) had to dig us out when it got muddy.”

Witnessing a military funeral - with the precision movements of the honor guard, the piercing noise of the 21-gun salute and the mournful notes of “Taps” being played by a lone bugler - is a moving experience. But the Arlington Ladies say they try not to get emotional.

“We’re not there to grieve for that person,” Lansell said of the 40 or so Air Force Arlington Ladies. “We didn’t know that individual. We’re really there to honor them and recognize the service they gave the country.”

For Dornell Kilcline, agreeing to organize the Navy’s Arlington Ladies in 1985, now about 45 strong, was a personally difficult task but one she accepted willingly. She explained that two of her children, Patrick, a Navy aviator, and Kathleen, three weeks away from earning her degree as a Navy doctor, had been killed in separate accidents a few years earlier and were buried at Arlington.

“I used to get emotional after attending a funeral service,” Kilcline said. “For the first two years, I would go back to my children’s markers, each time thinking, ‘This is too hard. I can’t do it.”’ But with time, Kilcline found the strength to continue.

“It’s a matter of having great faith,” she said. “God will bring lots of crosses our way. What’s important is how we carry them.”

If no family member can attend the funeral service, as happens sometimes when an elderly resident of the nearby Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home dies, the Arlington Lady on duty will write a personal note to the next of kin describing the service, the weather and the burial site so the family has a sense of being there and knowing that their loved one was not alone at the end.

Maggie Mangan, one of the longest-serving Arlington Ladies, first volunteered with the Air Force group in 1961. Now 74, she still fulfills her monthly service, despite her own bout with cancer and knee-replacement surgery.

“As the years go on, I seem to be able to do it still, but I do find the hills a bit steeper,” she said.

On this day, Mangan was the vision of a dignified lady, dressed in a blue silk dress and white gloves. After the widow of the dead airman was presented with the American flag by the chaplain, Mangan strode forward, removed her glove and grasped the widow’s hand as she extended her sympathies on behalf of the chief of staff and the Air Force family.

Mangan recalled a funeral years ago where the only other civilian participants were the deceased’s two elderly brothers.

“It was a bitterly cold day, and these two elderly gentlemen held on to each other,” she said. “They couldn’t believe that someone had come to their brother’s funeral. It was so rewarding.”

She added: “The woman’s touch helps somehow.”