Idaho buries 11 servicemen

BOISE – Eleven veterans from three branches of the military were laid to rest Friday at a state veterans cemetery, thanks to the efforts of a project that matches records of those who served their country with unclaimed remains in funeral homes.

In this case, the cremated remains of all 11 came from a single funeral home in Idaho. The veterans had served in three different wars. One of them, Sgt. James Overton, served in World War I and died Nov. 14, 1939.

“It’s sad to think they were lost in some funeral home,” said Sharon Bowman, a 57-year-old state employee with the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare in Nampa.

Bowman was among a small crowd that gathered at the Idaho State Veterans Cemetery to honor the veterans, who were identified through the Missing in America Project, a nonprofit organization that locates the unclaimed remains of veterans with assistance from state and federal agencies.

The unclaimed remains of 50 servicemembers have been found since 2005 in Idaho, where efforts at the state veterans cemetery inspired the creation of the nationwide Missing in America Project, Fred Salanti, a 60-year-old Vietnam veteran and director of the organization, said in a telephone interview.

Nationwide, the Missing in America Project has coordinators in 45 states who have identified the cremated remains of nearly 500 soldiers. About 350 have been laid to rest in veterans cemeteries.

“We are their family,” Salanti said. “We stand in and sign documents at the national cemeteries and the state cemeteries so they can receive those honors.”

The 11 veterans honored in Boise were from Idaho, California and Washington state, said Zach Rodriguez, director of the Idaho State Veterans Cemetery. The servicemen have been identified as veterans from the U.S. Army, Air Force and Marine Corps. They served in the Vietnam War, World War I and World War II.

The remains were identified earlier this year at a Lewiston funeral home. “Once they’ve been abandoned for more than a year, there’s a state statute that allows us to go recover the remains,” Rodriguez said.

Members of the Missing in America Project crosscheck data on U.S. servicemembers from a national data center with names and birthdates on unclaimed remains at funeral homes.

D.J. Stephens, a 51-year-old Marine veteran from eastern Idaho, said he didn’t know any of the soldiers, but wanted to pay his respects at the cemetery Friday.

“I’m going to be buried here myself,” Stephens said.