{"id":340423,"date":"2026-06-17T22:31:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T22:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/340423\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T22:31:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T22:31:08","slug":"army-veteran-laid-to-rest-in-first-unaccompanied-burial-at-west-texas-state-veterans-cemetery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/340423\/","title":{"rendered":"Army veteran laid to rest in first unaccompanied burial at West Texas State Veterans Cemetery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) &#8211; Sgt. Herman Brown Jr., who served in the U.S. Army for four years, was laid to rest Wednesday as the first unaccompanied burial at the<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/WestTexasStateVeteransCemetery\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/WestTexasStateVeteransCemetery\/\"> West Texas State Veterans Cemetery<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Dr. John Kelly the director for the Texas State Veterans Cemeteries Division says Brown Jr. had no known family members to attend the burial. But he said no veteran should ever be laid to rest alone.<\/p>\n<p>No veteran to be laid to rest alone<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cWe don\u2019t know much about him beyond what we find on that DD-214, and we don\u2019t know the circumstances of his life that brings him here today without next of kin, but what we do know, is he served his country faithfully and honorably, and we do know this community cares because they are showing up to be here and witness for a veteran they never met before,\u201d Kelly said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Kelly said every veteran\u2019s burial is personal and that every service member deserves to be honored and remembered.<\/p>\n<p>Honoring our veterans <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cBut it\u2019s also very personal for me because I am a veteran too, I spent 23 years in the U.S. army, so we have veterans on various staff and all the different cemeteries, we all feel the same way about it, this is our home too, this is where we will all be interred as well, so we want to treat our veterans and families just like we want our family to be treated once our time comes,\u201d Kelly said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Paul Brooks, a veteran, said he did not know Brown personally but said the stories shared about him made it clear he was a man worthy of being remembered.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cWhat made his life extraordinary and meaningful and his legacy a lasting one, wasn\u2019t the roads he traveled or the ranks he achieved in the army, but the love he had for his fellow man,\u201d Brooks said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">While Sergeant Brown Jr. may have not have had family at his side, Kelley says the support shown by the community ensured he was far from alone.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 KCBD. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) &#8211; Sgt. Herman Brown Jr., who served in the U.S. Army for four years, was&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340424,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[7423,34827,111819,68926,56367,4618,8799,28016,121412,168,170,169,121413,25166,121411,8510,27,24448,121414,3435,1913,2430],"class_list":["post-340423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lubbock","tag-army","tag-brown","tag-burial","tag-cemetery","tag-herman","tag-jayden","tag-john","tag-kelly","tag-laid","tag-lubbock","tag-lubbock-headlines","tag-lubbock-news","tag-rest","tag-serve","tag-served","tag-state","tag-texas","tag-u-s","tag-unaccomapnied","tag-veteran","tag-veterans","tag-west"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}