Long-forgotten remains of military men buried

PORTLAND – Four military veterans whose cremated remains sat unclaimed for decades in Oregon’s state-run mental hospital were laid to rest Wednesday in Willamette National Cemetery.

Val Conley, the deputy director of the state Department of Veterans’ Affairs, accepted the United States flag on behalf of the men whose relatives could not be located. They were Army Pvt. James Butler, Army Sgt. William Madson, Navy Boatswain’s Mate 2nd Class Frank Martin and Navy sailor Lanier Johnson, whose rank is unknown.

Madson and Johnson served in World War I; the others served just before or during World War II.

Almost nothing is known about the lives they led.

From the late 1800s to the 1970s, the unclaimed bodies of 3,600 patients were cremated, and the remains stored in copper canisters. There were no names on the urns, only numbers that corresponded to the identities of patients in hospital records.

The canisters, many of them corroded, were discovered in a storage room in 2004.

The disrespectful treatment of the ashes spurred lawmakers to replace the crumbling Oregon State Hospital – the place where the movie “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” was filmed – and establish an online database to help people find the remains of their forgotten relatives. Only about 100 canisters have been claimed, said Robert Yde, a state hospital spokesman.

At Wednesday’s ceremony, following a procession of Patriot Guard Riders and a half-dozen cars, Conley sat alone in a row of chairs reserved for family. The folded flag she accepted will be displayed in a case at the Veterans’ Building in Salem.

“I think about those guys sitting down in that cold, dark basement for 50 years and nobody claiming them,” she said. “It saddens me. It saddens me there was no family.”

And without the memories of relatives, it will prove almost impossible to learn more about the men. Conley and the Oregon State Hospital provided the following information:

• James Butler was admitted to the hospital about six weeks after he left the military in July 1941, months before Pearl Harbor. He spent the rest of his life in the hospital and died in 1961.

• Frank Martin served from June 1943 until March 1946. He moved to Salem from Illinois on July 7, 1971, and died just 22 days later at age 47. Why he moved to Oregon and how his ashes ended up unclaimed in the state mental hospital are questions that could not be answered Wednesday.

• Lanier Johnson was born in Missouri in June 1900 and died in April 1968. He served from January 1917 until November 1919 and fathered one child during a marriage that ended in divorce.

• William Madson was born in Taylor, N.D., in October 1891 and died in January 1965. He worked as a carpenter after World War I.

The remains of the four men were placed together on a table at the ceremony. The canisters of the Army men were in green satchels, and the canisters of the Navy men in blue. They will each get markers at Oregon’s largest military graveyard.